by Diana Palmer
“That’s true.” She cuddled closer. “Do you suppose we could forget my exercises tonight?”
He shifted her on his lap. “No,” he said with a smile, and kissed her.
“Tyson!” she muttered. “I’ve walked around half the day!”
“That’s good, but it’s not what the doctor ordered. You want to walk again, don’t you? Properly, I mean?”
“Yes,” she admitted, then grimaced. “All right. I’ll do the horrible things.”
“That’s my girl.”
The odd thing was that she felt like his girl. There was a tenderness between them now that she noticed in the simplest acts. At dinner that evening, he seated her at the table. He creamed her coffee. And when he wasn’t doing things for her, he watched her, stared at her with the most curious expression. She felt protected and safer than ever before in her life.
“Did your mother even come to see about you?” he asked as they sat over a second cup of coffee.
She shook her head. “She and I have never been close, you know.”
“Why didn’t Bruce tell me about the wreck?” he wanted to know, his eyes narrow and piercing.
She hesitated. It was just one more thing that would hurt him, and she’d had enough of that.
“Why didn’t he?” he persisted.
“Ty, he wasn’t deliberately cruel,” she said, choosing her words carefully. She touched the back of his hand where it rested beside his coffee cup. “He was possessive…just obsessed with me—I wish I’d realized it sooner, but I didn’t. Maybe he was afraid to tell you; or just didn’t think you’d care…”
His face closed up. He turned his hand over and touched her fingers lightly. “He knew I cared,” he said. “After he told me that bull about your opinion of me as a lover, I stayed drunk for two days. José told him about that.”
“Oh, Ty,” she breathed.
“I got over it.” He looked up, his face harder than ever. “But I hated you for a while. If he’d told me about the wreck then…” He searched her wide green eyes, the elfin face in its frame of lustrous black hair, and the anger seemed to drain out of him. “Oh, hell, I’d have been there like a shot, who am I kidding?” he muttered. “I’d have walked straight through hell to get to you if I’d known you’d been hurt and needed someone.”
Yes, he would have, she thought. But he didn’t add that he would have done the same for any hurt or sick person. She knew how generous he was when people were down on their luck. Conchita had told her things about him—things she’d never known before—about the good works he did anonymously.
Her hand closed around his. “They told me that I was calling for you when they brought me in. It was already too late to save the baby, but I felt so empty and alone and frightened,” she recalled, studying his lean hand. She saw it contract jerkily around her fingers.
He stood up suddenly, moving away from the table. “I’d better get that paperwork done,” he said in a harsh, haunted tone.
She could have bitten her tongue for what she’d said. It just put up more walls between them. He was retreating into his, right now; withdrawing from the pain of the past.
“Ty…” she began.
“You’d better decorate your damned tree,” he said without looking at her. “You can do those exercises later.”
She threw down her napkin and stood up. “I wasn’t trying to get at you,” she said desperately. “You take every single thing I say at face value.”
He turned and looked at her, his eyes blazing. “Do I? And without reason? You haven’t forgiven me for what happened. In your heart, you blame me for the condition you’re in and for losing the baby. And maybe I blame myself, too. Bruce made mischief, but I believed him. So did you. Maybe neither of us is willing to go that last step—to trusting each other. I haven’t had any more practice at trust than you have. So it might not be a bad idea to step back and take a look at things before we start making commitments we don’t really feel.”
Her mind was spinning. She’d never heard him make such a long speech, and she didn’t understand what he was saying. Did he mean that he didn’t want a commitment to her? Did he want her to get well so that she could go away and leave him?
She started to ask him, but he was already striding away, lighting another infernal cigarette. She stared after him blankly for a moment, then got slowly to her feet and dragged herself into the living room. All the buoyancy, the magic of the day, seemed to have vanished.
It was hard going, standing long enough to get the decorations on. Conchita helped her dress the magnificent tree, talking animatedly about other Christmases when the grande señor was still alive, about all the company they’d entertained and the lavish parties they’d given.
“Never any parties since then.” Conchita sighed. “Señor Ty does not like people.”
“Especially female people,” Erin muttered darkly, glaring at the ornament in her hand.
“Sí, that is true,” Conchita agreed, taking the phrase at face value. “It is because of his looks, I think. He is sensitive about them, and he thinks no woman could ever care for him because he is not, how you say, a magazine pinup.” She smiled and shook her dark head. “How sad, because it is not how a man looks, but what he is, that attracts a woman. Señor Ty is muy macho—you know, like my José. He will always be the man in the house, and that is how it should be.”
Erin could have said something about that, but she bit her lip. She was in enough trouble with him already.
Ty didn’t say a word about her tree when he walked into the living room later that evening. She was in her leotard, working out; he sat and watched her and coached for a few minutes, but his heart wasn’t really in it.
“Do I get to sleep with you tonight, or am I still in the doghouse?” she asked finally, brushing back her damp hair.
He just stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. In fact, he didn’t. He’d been sure she wouldn’t let him near her, and here she was making propositions. He pondered over it until he decided that women probably felt the same urges men did, especially when they’d had a taste of fulfillment. She could therefore want him physically without loving him. Which was a bitter realization, because he’d only just come to the conclusion that the physical part of it wasn’t all he wanted anymore. Somewhere along the way, he’d awakened to other needs: emotional ones.
“Do you want to sleep with me?” he asked, searching her eyes. “Now that you’ve had a taste of it, you can’t live without it; is that what you’re saying?”
It was like a slap in the face. She didn’t see his hurt pride or his own insecurity or the disappointment he felt at what he interpreted as a self-centered expression of physical need. She only heard cutting words that made her feel like a tramp.
“I guess I can just turn on the electric blanket instead,” she said after a minute, her eyes averted. “I can live without sex, thanks.”
He started to speak, closed his mouth, got up and stomped out of the room. Erin stared after him with tears in her eyes. She couldn’t bear the change in him, and all because she’d been trying to tell him that she loved him. She did love him, she realized. Perhaps she always had. At first, it had been a challenge to catch his eye, to make him notice her. And then, at some point—she couldn’t say when—it had become something deeper, stronger. During all those long months of physical torment and mental anguish, the thought of him had sustained her. She’d wanted him so badly then; had wanted to call him, to tell him. But Bruce had managed to convince her that Ty despised her, that he still wanted nothing to do with her, especially now that she was a cripple. So she’d withdrawn into her shell and told herself she hated Ty for causing what had happened to her. But she hadn’t, not really. One look at him was enough to open her heart, and being around him, with him, near him, had reawakened all the old hungers. Yes, she loved him. But in trying to tell him so, nervously working up to it, she’d only alienated him. And now there didn’t seem to be a chance i
n the world of healing the old wounds.
As the days passed, things went from bad to worse. Ty ignored her. Unfortunately, his men weren’t so fortunate; his temper was hot enough to start fires, and even Conchita and José were beginning to feel the heat. The food wasn’t seasoned enough, the coffee wasn’t strong enough, his car wasn’t being cleaned properly, the stairs had dust on them. Everything irritated him. And when he wasn’t complaining, he was locked in his study with the books. He hadn’t touched Erin since they’d gone into San Antonio. He didn’t seem to want to anymore, and she felt neglected and unwelcome.
By Christmas week, Erin began to notice how much she’d changed since coming to Staghorn. She’d been doing her exercises faithfully, even though Ty no longer watched her, and she was making some progress. She could walk for the first time without the cane. Her scars were fading. Her face had regained most of its radiance, and she was gaining weight. She looked more and more like the model Bruce had first brought to Staghorn—and the prettier she got, the angrier Ty got.
He’d begun to see her the way she’d been: a beauty, a lovely fairy who could have had any man she wanted, any time. And then he looked at himself in the mirror and knew that he didn’t have a hope in hell of holding her. Once she was completely well, she’d leave, go back to the old life, and he’d be alone. Well, damn it, he told himself, he’d known that from the beginning, hadn’t he? He’d set out to shock her back to life and get her on her feet again; to make up to her for what he’d cost her.
She was well on the road to recovery. But he couldn’t bear to get too close to her. His heart was vulnerable. If he didn’t watch out, she’d carry it off to New York with her. It shocked him, disturbed him, to realize how vulnerable he was. He didn’t want to care about her. He wanted to be whole and independent. But she was sapping him. He’d seen himself that day in San Antonio—so drunk on her that he was like a pet instead of a man, fawning on her. He’d hated his weakness. He kept hearing his father tell him not to let any woman do that to him; to keep himself strong, in command. All his life he’d denied those hungers, and now they were bringing him to his knees.
Finally, one morning, he decided it was time to fight back, to confront Erin—and himself. He headed for the living room, where he knew she’d be doing her exercises, then stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her with narrowed eyes.
When Erin saw him, she got to her feet with a minimum of awkwardness and brushed back her hair. “Yes?” she asked politely. “Did you want something?” She felt as if she were talking to a stranger. He was unapproachable now, carefully girded in his emotional armor. The iron man all over again.
He lifted the smoking cigarette in his hand to his lips, staring at her with amused contempt, the way he’d looked at her in the early days. It embarrassed her.
“Not bad,” he said. “You’re getting your figure back.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said, keeping her voice even as she shifted from one foot to the other. “I can’t help the way I look.”
“That makes two of us.”
She perched on the arm of the overstuffed chair and looked at him. He was thinner and, there were new lines in his face. Suddenly she realized how little communication there had been between them recently.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked, startling him. “And not just between the two of us.”
He drew on the cigarette and blew out a thin cloud of smoke. “Guessing?”
She shook her head. “You look worried.”
“I’m having a few financial problems,” he said after a moment. “Or should I say, we’re having a few financial problems, Mrs. Wade?”
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“Bad enough.” He sighed. “I invested heavily in a consignment of grain to feed my cattle this winter. The silos were owned by a corporation that defaulted, and the grain was confiscated. That set me back on feed so I had to take a loss by selling off cattle in a bad market. One investment balances another, you see,” he explained. “One loss causes another. Kind of like dominoes. We may pull out, we may not. It’s going to take some quick thinking and a lot of legal advice. At that, we may lose half of what we own.”
She smiled gently. “Well, half isn’t so bad, is it, considering the size of Staghorn?”
“Could you live with half a body?”
“I’ve been doing it, haven’t I?”
And that’s all it took to set him off again. Without another word, he wheeled and walked out of the room. She cursed under her breath. If just once he’d stand still and talk about things!
She couldn’t remember ever having had such a miserable Christmas. She’d wrapped his present and put it in a huge box, wrapped that, and put it under the tree. And all the time, she worried about what he would think. Their marriage was in terrible shape, yet she’d bought him a very expensive wedding band. She’d thought about returning it, but her stubborn heart wouldn’t let her. As long as there was a ghost of a chance that he might someday learn to care for her, she couldn’t give up. And maybe he’d like the diamonds, even if he didn’t like the symbolism of the ring. Besides, he could always hock it if he got desperate for money, she thought, and then was astonished at her own cynicism.
She was up and dressed early on Christmas morning. Ty was already sitting in the living room when she walked in, and he looked wonderful in tailored slacks and a neat striped shirt. His hair was clean and meticulously combed, his face shaven. Erin knew he’d done it for her sake, and she wanted to thank him—or at least smile at him—but there’d been too much tension between them lately; she felt awkward and uncomfortable just being around him.
“Merry Christmas,” she said politely.
“Merry Christmas.” Ty stood up as she approached, motioning her to sit down across from him. He noticed that she was walking without her cane, and without limping noticeably. The emerald-green dress she had on complemented her eyes, as did the soft, natural-looking makeup she had artfully applied. Her hair was brushed forward, curling softly and framing her elfin face. All in all, she looked refined and thoroughly lovely. “Very nice,” he murmured. At her expression of surprise, he added hastily, “The tree, I mean.”
Erin glanced at it, then looked underneath and was faintly surprised to see a gaily wrapped package beside those she already knew were for José and Conchita.
“You got me something, didn’t you?” he asked shortly, glaring at her.
“Well, yes…”
“So I got you something.”
It was a big box. Of course his was, too, but that was just camouflage. She wondered if he might have done the same thing, then shook her head. Too wild a coincidence, she told herself. She poured some coffee from the elegant silver service Conchita had set up, then selected a sweet roll and settled back in the overstuffed armchair.
“You’re walking much better these days,” he observed. He leaned back against the sofa with his coffee cup in hand.
“I’ve been working hard,” she replied.
“Quite a change from those first few days here.”
She moved her shoulders restlessly. “Yes. Quite a change.”
He sipped his coffee quietly. “Want to give out the presents?”
“Okay.” She got up, faltering a little as she knelt. She heard him behind her, calling to José and Conchita.
They came in, grinning, took their presents and gave small ones to Ty and Erin. Then everyone opened their gift boxes and exclaimed over the contents. Erin found a beautiful shawl that Conchita had hand-crocheted for her and Ty, a muffler. Conchita opened a set of handkerchiefs from Ty and a small silver box from Erin, and José got a tie and a wallet.
“Muchas gracias.” Conchita grinned. “Now is okay if we go over to my sister’s house, just for a little while, until time to serve the dinner?”
“Sure,” Ty told her. “Go ahead.”
“We come back soon.” She laughed. “Thank you for these,” she added, clutching her presents,
and José echoed her thanks. Then they left, closing the door behind them. And Erin and Ty were alone, completely alone, for the first time since the day they’d bought the tree.
Chapter Ten
Erin finished her coffee nervously, wishing that she and Ty could go back to the early days of her residence here and recapture the budding magic of being together. There seemed to be such an insurmountable barrier between them now. He was always on the defensive—perhaps out of his own guilt—and she couldn’t reach him anymore.
He seemed to be nervous himself, if his chain-smoking was any indication of it. He moved restlessly to the tree, picked up her present and handed it to her.
“We might as well get this out of the way,” he said gruffly, pausing to pick up the box with his own name on it.
Erin, sitting quietly with her present beside her on the sofa, felt really uncomfortable as she watched him open it. What was he going to think of the ring? Would he be angry? Would he be surprised?
He removed the wrapping and looked inside at the smaller box. Glancing curiously at her, he picked it up, slowly unwrapped it and then opened it.
His expression was one of numb shock, and Erin wanted to go through the floor.
She got up and knelt a little awkwardly beside him. “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for the box. “It was a stupid thing to do. I didn’t mean—”
He caught her wrist. “Here,” he said in an odd, gruff tone. “Put it on.”
It took a moment for her to realize that he wanted her to put it on his finger. She fumbled it out of the box nervously and slid it onto his ring finger, relieved to find that it was a perfect fit.
He looked up then, his eyes strange and glittering, holding hers.
“You don’t…mind?” she faltered.
He put his hands on either side of her face, searching her fascinated eyes, and bent over her. His mouth descended, pressing her lips softly apart, shocking her with the aching tenderness of his kiss.