He couldn’t allow her sorrow or her declaration of past love to confuse the issue. Maybe she hadn’t aborted his child or given the child up for adoption, but that didn’t change the fact that her testimony had sent him to prison for five years—five years in hell!
Mother threatened me with the possibility that she would have the doctor get rid...She said if I didn’t testify at the trial...
He could hear those words ringing inside his head, over and over again, like a wicked litany. Don’t believe her. She could be lying. She would tell you anything in order to gain your help. She betrayed you once; she’ll do it again, if you let her.
God, how he wanted to believe her. How he wanted to comfort and caress her, to lift her into his arms and carry her over to the bed and make slow, sweet love to her—to ease their mutual suffering. He could feel her pain inside him, mingling with his, intensifying the agony and yet at the same time diminishing it because it was shared.
He wanted to tell her how sorry he was that she had lost their child, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t respond to her needs. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. He didn’t dare show her any weakness. She was the only person on earth to whom he’d ever surrendered himself, opening up and becoming vulnerable. She had nearly destroyed him once, but never again. Deanna was responsible in part for the hard man he had become, so she would have to deal with that man.
Luke released her and stepped back, putting some distance between them. Deanna stumbled without Luke’s support, but quickly caught herself and stood straight, trembling, her gaze locking with his as they stared at each other.
For one split second Deanna had thought Luke was going to comfort her, that he was going to share his grief with her and allow her to share hers with him. Then he had slammed that door shut before she could get a toehold. But he believed her about the baby. At least he’d given her that much. That was all he would give her. His actions made that abundantly clear.
She knew that Luke thought nothing had changed between them just now, that he had successfully guarded himself from any feelings he still had for her. But she knew better. In that one infinitesimal moment in time, he had given her hope. The very fact that he believed her about her miscarriage told her that Luke’s mind and heart weren’t completely closed to the truth.
Deanna wiped her eyes with her fingertips, all the while watching Luke, waiting for him to say or do something. The next move would have to be his.
“It’ll be daylight soon,” he said. “We might as well head for home.”
Deanna nodded agreement as she continued staring at him. He grasped her arm and pulled her toward the door. After grabbing her purse, she followed without protest. Outside pink dawn eased upward into the dark gray sky. The motel sign flashed on and off. A train whistle sounded from miles away, a lonely, forlorn moan. The highway that went straight through Stone Creek was deserted, not a single vehicle in sight.
Luke walked Deanna to her car. She fumbled in her purse for her keys, then snatched them up in her hand and tried to unlock the Mustang. Her fingers trembled. Luke covered her hand with his, steadying her, then inserted the key in the lock and opened the door.
He shifted back and forth from one foot to another, like a pawing bull raking his hooves into the earth. “I’ve got a ranch to run, so I won’t have much time to help you play detective.”
“I’ll take whatever time you can give me.” He wouldn’t look at her now—now, when she so desperately needed to see his eyes and try to understand what he was thinking and feeling.
“It might be a good idea if you moved to Montrose,” he said, staring over her shoulder. “If you were close by, it would make things easier for me. We could work around my schedule.”
“What would Kizzie say about my moving into the house?”
“I wasn’t planning on moving you into Kizzie’s house.”
Was he suggesting she live in the cabin where they’d first made love? Surely not. Luke hadn’t been the sentimental type, not even when he’d loved her.
“Where would I stay?” Deanna asked.
“There’s a small guest house on Montrose. It’s not used much, but Alva could get it ready for you by tonight.” Continuing to look past her across the road, Luke thrust his hands into his pockets and spread his legs apart. “Your staying in the guest house would be more convenient, all the way around. There wouldn’t be any need for us to come back into town to the motel.”
Deanna realized that Luke had no idea that he’d just given her another fragment of hope. If he wasn’t going to continue publicly humiliating her by making her meet him at the county’s most visible motel, then he had already softened his heart just a little toward her. He might never love her again, but Deanna prayed that he would one day forgive her. She wanted this for Luke more than for herself. He needed to forgive her even more than she needed his forgiveness.
“Where is the guest house located?” she asked.
“You take the road up to the main house, then turn left and go around back. It’s within spitting distance. There’s one bedroom, a bath and a living room—kitchen combination.”
“I’ll go back to Mother’s and pack,” Deanna said. “I’ll meet you at the guest house around six this evening, if that’s okay with you.”
“Make it seven,” Luke said. “I have supper with Kizzie most nights. Afterward, I’ll come over and we can discuss just how we’re going to go about finding out who killed your father.”
Luke turned from her, heading for his truck. Deanna rushed after him and grabbed his arm. He stilled instantly, glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes into slits.
“Thank you, Luke. I know this won’t be easy for you.”
He pulled away from her touch, then grinned mockingly. “It won’t be easy for you either, babe.”
He walked away, got in his truck and started the engine. Deanna stood there and watched him drive off down the road. She didn’t move until the truck’s red taillights disappeared from view.
There was so little of the young man she had loved left in Luke McClendon. The man who had ravaged her last night, the man who had been unable to comfort her this morning, was a stranger to Deanna. Had her betrayal and his years in prison erased any kindness, any compassion from Luke’s heart? If so, she was responsible for his turning into a hard, cold, ruthless loner.
Was it possible that she and she alone had the power to help Luke reclaim his soul and find peace within himself?
Deanna closed the door to her bedroom and sighed with relief. She had thought someone—more than likely her mother, if not her mother and brother—would meet her at the front door, demanding to know where she’d been. She was thankful for even this short reprieve before she had to face her family. It was only a matter of time before they found out that she’d spent the night in a motel with Luke. She dreaded facing them, and on top of that she had to tell them she was moving to Montrose.
Deanna stripped off her clothes, taking care to stuff her tattered blouse into her suitcase. She didn’t want anyone to see that torn piece of material. What had happened between Luke and her last night was nobody’s business except theirs. She knew that despite his desire for the whole county to know they had spent the night at the motel together, Luke would never tell a soul what had transpired between them, behind closed doors.
After turning on the shower, Deanna stepped into the glass cubicle and allowed the warm water to cascade over her. She could still smell Luke on her body—that strong, unique scent that was his and his alone. At the thought of him, her body tightened and released, sending a tingling sensation upward from her feminine core. Luke had taken her, found his own release and deliberately left her unsatisfied last night. Her body ached with need, craving Luke. She closed her eyes and imagined what it would have been like if he had made love to her with the wild, sweet abandon that had given them both so much pleasure all those years ago. Deanna leaned her head back against the glass wall and sucked in a long, low cry of anguish and l
onging. After all this time, she still wanted Luke McClendon. Luke and no one else. It had always been that way and she was afraid it always would be.
Luke didn’t bother going home. Even though there was a good chance Kizzie would be up and making coffee, he parked his truck and went straight to the stables. He saddled Cherokee and rode the big dun stud away from the main house and up into the nearby hills. He needed to be alone, needed to escape from civilization and find some peace of mind. But Luke knew he could never have any real peace, that contentment eluded him and happiness was an impossibility. He tried to fight the wildness in him and sometimes he won—other times the wildness won. But there was an emotional deadness inside him that he feared the most. Nothing would bring to life that dead spot deep within him.
Deanna had killed something in him fifteen years ago, something that nothing and no one could resurrect. Five years in Huntsville’s brutal prison, following Deanna’s betrayal, had destroyed what little gentleness or compassion there had been in him. And even now, as the head of the McClendon family, ruling Montrose as his father and grandfather had done, Luke still felt unworthy. There was a part of him that knew he didn’t deserve love and happiness, that he didn’t deserve a good woman and children of his own. He was a hard, mean son of a bitch. A good woman wouldn’t want him, and certainly wouldn’t want his children.
Oh, Luke I wanted your baby more than anything on earth.
Damn Deanna! And damn his stupidity for believing her. And that was the problem—he did believe her. He believed she had wanted his child. And if that was true, then there was a possibility that everything else she’d said was true, too. Maybe she had loved him. Maybe her mother had threatened her. Maybe she honestly couldn’t remember what had happened the night Rayburn Atchley was murdered. Was it possible that he’d hated Deanna so much for testifying against him that he hadn’t allowed himself to even consider that she might have been telling the truth?
Luke guided Cherokee deeper and deeper into the hills, not even aware of where he was going until he came upon the burned-out ruins of the cabin. He dismounted, dropped the reins and walked over to a nearby live oak tree, its crooked limbs reaching toward the sky. He remembered the day he had set fire to the place and stood at a distance, watching it burn. The day after he had been released from prison. Baxter hadn’t said a word to him. But it wouldn’t have mattered if his father had cursed him for destroying the old cabin. Luke had done what his soul demanded, no matter how dark and warped that soul had become. All his anger and hatred had been centered on that pile of old logs, that ramshackle, one-room cabin, where he and Deanna had made love the first time and numerous times afterward. He had tended the fire, keeping it confined and not allowing it to spread. All he’d wanted was to wipe their meeting place from the face of the earth. But now, ten years later, the rock chimney still standing, the remains were as vivid a reminder of what he’d lost as the cabin itself had been.
God, he wished she’d never come back to Stone Creek! He had made a life for himself, one he was used to, one that suited his needs. He had accepted the fact that he would always be alone, always be unloved. He didn’t need Deanna Atchley coming back into his life and messing around with his mind and his emotions. He hadn’t thought himself capable of hurting a woman the way he’d hurt Deanna last night. He hadn’t harmed her physically. Even in his foulest moods, he wasn’t enough of a bastard to do that. But he had humiliated her by using her the way he had. He had thought if he could make her feel as helpless and degraded as he had felt when he first went to Huntsville, it would ease the raw pain eating away at his guts. But afterward, he’d felt ashamed that his brutal soul had urged him to take his revenge on Deanna in such a way.
Hell, he shouldn’t regret what he’d done. He should be feeling in control and loving the power he had over her now. Instead, he felt out of control, on the verge of losing his sanity. He had spent fifteen years hating Deanna, wanting her to burn in hell for what she’d done to him, and now here he was preparing to help her and making plans to have sex with her as often as possible. That’s where he’d made a fatal error—thinking he could have sex with Deanna without it meaning anything to him.
He could lie to her. He could lie to the whole damn world. But he wouldn’t lie to himself. He had slept with his share of women in the past fifteen years, had scratched an itch and kept his emotions totally uninvolved. But Deanna was different. Even now. And he should have known she would be. He had loved her once, loved her with a passion that overruled every other aspect of his life. He would willingly have laid down his life for her. A man—any man, even Luke McClendon—couldn’t love a woman that deeply and think even hatred and an unquenchable thirst for revenge could make him immune to her.
Luke turned from the cabin ruins and sought out the clearing that overlooked a large section of Montrose, from the hills to the pastures and beyond to the horizon. Sitting down on a rock ledge, Luke watched the morning come alive. The fog lifting from the hilltops. The sunlight dappling the green with gold. The breeze ruffling through the wildflowers. The sky bursting with various shades of blue, tinged with pale pink and cream.
Even at this distance he heard the rippling waters of the stream that ran through the north section of Montrose. This was his—all of this—as far as the eye could see. Ruling Montrose should be enough for any man—more than enough for a quarter-breed bastard son. So why wasn’t it enough for him? Why did he feel so empty inside, so in need of something that was missing?
“Don’t be a fool,” he said aloud, but only Cherokee and the birds in the trees heard him. “Don’t you dare trust Deanna Atchley again.”
Deanna placed the last garment in her suitcase and closed the lid. She hadn’t brought much with her when she’d come from Jackson. Just the basics. It would be easy enough to take her one case downstairs and put it in the car before anyone saw her. If there was some way she could get around having a confrontation with her family, she’d take that route. But that wasn’t possible. She hadn’t come home to run away from the truth—not any longer. She had come home to find the truth and face it.
Deanna lifted her makeup case off the bed and set it on the floor beside her suitcase. A soft knocking at the door alerted her that someone other than she was awake in the Atchley household. Nerves quivered in her stomach.
“Deanna, may I speak to you, please.” Phyllis’s voice held that slightly superior, slightly aggravated tone that she had perfected over the years.
“Yes, Mother.” Deanna sighed, dreading the thought of facing her mother. “The door’s unlocked. Come in.”
Phyllis, her blond hair perfectly coiffured, her long mauve nails an exact match for the mauve silk pantsuit she wore, stood in the doorway thoroughly surveying her daughter. Deanna suddenly felt as if she were on the auction block.
“What do you think you’ll see by staring at me that way?” Deanna asked.
“I was looking for the bruises that Luke McClendon no doubt left on your body.” Phyllis’s nose wrinkled as if she’d smelled something unpleasant.
A lead weight dropped to the bottom of Deanna’s stomach. So, her mother already knew that she’d spent the night with Luke. “I can assure you that I have no bruises on my body.” No bruises. But a badly battered heart. And her pride that had been severely damaged.
“How could you?” Stepping into the bedroom, Phyllis slammed the door behind her. “Home only a few days and you’ve already run to him like some bitch dog in heat! My God, Deanna, what sort of hold does that man have over you?”
“How did you find out?” Deanna asked.
“What difference does it make?” Phyllis clenched her jaw, then breathed deeply through her nose and exhaled in a disgruntled huff. “I received an anonymous phone call, if you must know. How do you think that made me feel, having some voice over the phone tell me that my daughter had spent the night at the Stone Creek Motel with Luke McClendon!”
“Obviously, it made you angry.”
“Angry
? Yes, I’m angry. But I’m ashamed of you and for you. I’ve worked long and hard to get past what happened with you and Luke and—and your father’s death. People had finally quit talking about it. But now you’ve come home and run straight into that man’s arms. We will be the talk of the whole county again.”
“I spent the night with Luke because he asked me to,” Deanna said. “And I’m going to move into a guest house on Montrose, today, because Luke has asked me to.”
“Have you lost your mind? Oh, God!” Phyllis covered her face with her hands, as if shutting out the sight of her daughter. “If you’re willing to take up where you left off with Luke McClendon, then you’re still mentally unstable.”
“Listen to me, Mother. I’m quite sane. My relationship with Luke is really none of your business. It’s no one’s business but his and mine.”
Phyllis grabbed Deanna’s arm. “What does that man do to you to make you lose your good sense? Don’t you know that he hates you? He’ll use you and toss you aside like yesterday’s trash.”
“Luke has offered to help me regain my memory of the night Daddy was killed. That’s more than my own family is willing to do.” Deanna jerked free of her mother. “I need Luke’s help. I believe he’s the key to my regaining my memory. And Luke needs me as much as I need him.” Looking Phyllis straight in the eye, Deanna braced herself mentally and emotionally. “I know Luke hates me and I know why. His hatred didn’t stern solely from my having testified against him at his trial.”
“What other reason could there be?”
“You tell me, Mother.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you told Baxter McClendon that I’d had an abortion.” Deanna stepped forward, right in Phyllis’s face, and glared at her. “How could you have done it? How could you have lied to Luke’s father that way, knowing that Luke might believe I’d actually gotten rid of his baby?”
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