by Diana Palmer
She bit her lower lip, struggling for words.
“No need to agonize over it,” he murmured, going back to the plates on her tray as he moved it across her lap. “It will subside eventually,” he added with rueful humor.
He made it sound matter-of-fact, and he didn’t seem to be embarrassed that she saw him like that. She watched his face as he undid the lids from the plates.
“It doesn’t embarrass you?” she asked in a whisper.
“Not particularly.” He laughed shortly, glancing down at her. “In fact, it’s a welcome change.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” He laid the lids aside. “It doesn’t happen with other women lately,” he said, turning to face her. “In fact, I can’t make it happen with anyone else. Only you.”
Her eyes spoke volumes, half questioning, half jealous.
He nodded. “That’s right. I tried. I went to Denver on business after I’d kissed you that day in the gallery. I deliberately came on to one of the party girls I met there and took her upstairs with me. We drank and watched television, and I sent her away, because despite her beauty and her obvious expertise, I couldn’t even pretend to be interested.”
“You…were…?”
“The word is impotent,” he said quietly. “Ironic, isn’t it? All I have to do is look at you, and I’m so aroused I can’t even hold a fork.”
He drew her attention to it, to the fine tremor of his big hand as he dipped the fork into a creamy chicken dish. She hated the thought of him with another woman, even if it did make her feel warm all over to realize that he only wanted her.
“Open up,” he said gently, lifting the food to her mouth.
“But, you don’t have to do that,” she protested. All the same, she opened her mouth and let him slide the forkful in.
“Yes, I do,” he replied gently, searching her poor, bruised face. “I’ve hurt you more than I ever meant to. But that’s over. I’m going to take the most exquisite care of you from now on, Anna.”
Because he felt sorry for her. That, and desire. She could have cried.
“But, Randall,” she whispered.
His eyes flashed at her from under thick brown eyebrows. “Randall can go to hell. He never should have taken you to that liquor store. And you haven’t yet said why you got out of the car in the first place.”
“There was a kitten,” she said, her eyes softening with the memory. “It was lost and heading for the street.”
His heart turned over. At that moment, he loved her with such passion that his body could barely contain it. He wanted to throw the tray aside and come down beside her on the bed.
She lifted her eyes, puzzled by his silence, and saw the vicious heat of his gaze. Her face froze.
“What is it?” he rasped.
“That look,” she said, averting her gaze. “You looked as if you hated me.”
He reached down and turned her face back to his. “That look is a raging desire that I can only just control,” he said tightly. “Yes,” he added when she stared at him. “It’s every bit as violent as hatred, but I assure you, it isn’t. And there’s no need to be afraid of it, or me. Nothing is going to happen, Anna, least of all while you’re lying there bruised and broken.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said gently.
“Aren’t you?” he asked curtly. “The doctor said that you were going to have some emotional trauma because of what happened. The man was about my size, he said.”
Her eyes swept over him softly. “Yes,” she agreed. “But he was a cold, brutal stranger who wanted my jewelry.”
His heart leapt. “I see.”
He lifted another forkful of chicken to her mouth, taking his time, feeding her as gently as if she’d been a child.
“My eye hurts,” she said when he finished and moved the tray away.
“I don’t doubt it. You’ve got a shiner.”
She managed a smile. Her face hurt when it moved. “I can tell people I was in a brawl.”
“You gave him a few bruises, I hear,” he said, hating the thought of some man beating her.
“A few bites, too,” she muttered angrily. “He could have just taken the jewelry, he didn’t have to…to hit me like that!”
Evan was vibrating with equal anger. She looked up and saw his face. It calmed her down.
The painkillers made her oddly comfortable with him, as if she didn’t have to fight her feelings or avoid personal questions.
“Evan, can I ask you something very personal?” she asked after a minute.
He was lighting a cigarette. He turned back to her, his dark hair falling roguishly onto his broad forehead, his jeans taut across his powerful legs as he leaned back against the wall beside the window and crossed them.
“Shoot,” he invited.
“You’re smoking!” she exclaimed.
His big shoulders rose and fell. “Just as well I couldn’t leave you long enough to go to a bar, or I’d be drinking, too,” he said.
“But why?”
“Because I was worried, of course,” he said, staring at her as if she were demented. “Polly spoke to your father this morning, by the way,” he added. “He returned to the States last night and got the message she’d left for him the night you were brought in. He’s on his way out from Atlanta now.”
“Daddy?” She smiled, delighted. “I haven’t seen him for years.”
“I know. Polly’s pretty nervous herself.”
“I wish they could make up,” she murmured. “Neither of them wants anyone else, but they can’t live together.”
“Your father will get tired of wandering someday and come home,” he told her. “Polly, I imagine, will be waiting.” He stared at her, curls of smoke drifting up from his cigarette. “What did you want to ask me?”
“Oh. That.” She studied his dark, unsmiling face. “You’ve been so different lately,” she murmured. “Not the same man you were.”
“How was I?”
“Lighthearted,” she recalled. “Carefree and playful. You’ve changed. Is it because of Nina?”
“What do you think, baby?”
She blushed at the endearment, remembering how and when he’d said it.
“Was that what you wanted to know?”
She drew in a slow breath. “No.” She studied her clasped hands. One was scraped raw where she’d fallen to the pavement during her struggle with her assailant. The experience had been terrifying, and she’d had nightmares since, but when Evan was around, she didn’t think about it.
“Well?” he asked impatiently.
“I don’t think I can.”
He moved closer to the bed. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can’t ask me,” he told her quietly.
“Even about…about that girl who said you hurt her?” she asked, repeating the gossip Polly had once told her.
He froze. His face stiffened as all his fears came back to torment him.
She looked up and winced. “I’m sorry. Evan, I’m sorry!”
He met her worried eyes and took a deep breath. “It was a long time ago,” he said dully.
“And you don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
His brows drew together. “What did you want to know about it? How I hurt her?”
She went scarlet and dropped her eyes.
He laughed bitterly. “Is that what you think, Anna?” he asked on an expelled breath. “That I get my kicks from being cruel in bed?”
Her hands tightened together until the knuckles went white. “No!”
“What if I do?” he persisted, angry that she could think of him that way. He remembered his own roughness with her when he’d kissed her, and realized that he might have given her a foundation for her assumptions. He moved closer to the bed, his eyes glittery with temper. “What if I like it?”
She ground her teeth together. “I know you’re not like that,” she said stubbornly.
�
�Do you?” he leaned down, his eyes looking straight into hers, making her heart jump and run. “I bit you,” he whispered. “Do you remember where?”
Her body trembled with the memory, her breasts going hard-tipped, betraying her. “Yes,” she whispered. “But it…didn’t hurt.”
“It wasn’t supposed to,” he said quietly. His eyes searched hers. “You’ve never made love at all, have you? Not even with Randall.”
“It always seemed so intimate,” she replied nervously. “Almost distasteful.”
“But not with me?”
Her lips parted as her gaze fell helplessly to his hard mouth, and she remembered how it felt to kiss him with her whole heart and have him kiss her back in that hungry, expert way. “Nothing could ever seem distasteful with you,” she managed weakly, too shattered to lie, even to save her pride.
His hand pressed gently against her cheek, his thumb rubbing softly over her swollen lips. He bent and brushed his nose against hers.
“Louisa was very small,” he whispered. “And as innocent as you are. We were going to become engaged, and I wanted her very badly. So I took her back to my apartment and undressed her. Then I pulled off my clothes and turned around…and she went white in the face.”
Her eyes lifted to his, startled.
He nodded grimly. “She was half your size. She knew nothing of sex except what she’d gleaned from her romance novels. I was crazy to have her and I didn’t realize how frightened she was. I thought I could coax her into my arms. For a few seconds I thought she was mine. Then I lost control, and she couldn’t get free. She fought me and screamed. I came to my senses just as she fell off the bed and hurt her ribs.” He stood up, his face pale. “She said some things…” He turned away, hiding the look in his eyes. “Anyway, that was my first and last experience of virgins. Since then I’ve avoided them like the plague.”
“If you loved her enough to marry her, it must have been a terrible blow to your pride,” she said quietly, understanding now his reluctance to become involved with her.
“It was.” He sighed heavily and glanced at her gentle face, at its soft flush. “She’d never seen a naked man before, much less one as obviously aroused as I was.” His eyes narrowed at her embarrassment. “You haven’t either, have you, Anna?”
“No,” she confessed huskily.
“She left Jacobsville soon afterward. The last I heard she was married to some insurance agent and had two children.” He laughed bitterly. “Maybe he had the good sense to get her drunk and turn the lights out first.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t have the lights out?”
She looked horrified. In spite of himself, he began to laugh. “Oh, my God, you don’t think people only make love at night, in the dark?”
“Don’t they?” she asked, trying to imagine how embarrassing it would be to lie down with a man like that in broad daylight.
He sat down heavily in the chair beside the bed. “Remind me to give you a copy of the Kamasutra for Christmas,” he said ruefully.
She knew what the book was, even if she didn’t own one. “Evan!”
“All right, keep your inhibitions.” He pursed his lips as he flicked ashes into the ashtray on her bedside table. “Not that you had many, in the gallery that day,” he remarked softly. “Or any other time I’ve touched you.”
Her heart was going crazy. “You shouldn’t talk to me like this,” she began.
“Because of the beloved physician?” he asked sarcastically.
“Because…it’s not decent,” she said uneasily.
He just shook his head. “Baby, you are a case,” he murmured. “So many repressions.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said curtly. “It’s no sin not to sleep around.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Did I say it was?”
“You said I was repressed,” she muttered.
His lips tugged into a reluctant smile. “Repressed, but passionate,” he replied. “All you need is a few lessons.”
She swallowed. “Randall can give them to me.”
“That’ll be the day,” he said flatly. “I told you, consider your engagement broken. Randall’s not getting you. Any lessons you get from now on will be from me.”
“You don’t want me!” she burst out.
“And you know better,” he said quietly.
She glared at him in a frustrated fury. “You can’t build a relationship on desire.”
“I agree.” He leaned back in the chair, his eyes dark and possessive. “But you can build one on love.”
“I love Randall,” she choked.
He only smiled. “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “You love me.”
“You don’t want me to,” she replied miserably, not bothering to deny it. She lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes wearily. “I’m sleepy.”
“Rest is the best thing for you. I’ll go and find Polly.” He put out his cigarette and adjusted the pillow under her head, pulling the sheet up to her breasts. The back of his knuckles brushed the tip of one and it went immediately taut.
She blushed, but he didn’t tease her about it. If anything, his face grew more solemn.
“When you’re out of here,” he said, “we’re going to start spending some time together.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she murmured.
“I know. I want to.” He bent and brushed his mouth gently across her forehead. “My poor bruised baby,” he whispered. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”
Tears threatened at his tenderness. He’d been every way with her, from teasing to cold to passionate, but he’d never been tender before.
“Nina won’t like it,” she said unsteadily. “And neither will Randall,” she added.
“Neither of them matters,” he said, dismissing them. He brushed his lips softly against hers. “Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“But you don’t want me around,” she whispered as she began to doze. “You keep throwing Nina at me to prove it.”
His face went rigid with self-contempt. “Every man’s entitled to one stupid mistake.”
“She’s very pretty.” She sighed.
“Go to sleep,” he said gruffly.
She did, her last conscious thought was that he sounded angry about something, but she was too sleepy to wonder what.
When she woke again, a tall man with graying blond hair and blue eyes was sitting in the chair where Evan had been, gravely concerned.
“Papa!” she exclaimed, and held out her arms.
He went into them with rough laughter, hugging her warmly. “And here I sat, worried to death about the kind of reception I’d get.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re my dad. I love you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner,” he said bitterly. “I was out of the country. I didn’t know until last night. How are you?” He stood up, studying her. “They said you were badly concussed.”
“I was, but I’m much better. Just a little battered.”
“So I see. And the man, the one who did it?”
“They haven’t caught him yet, but they may be able to trace him through the jewelry he took.”
“If he was a junkie, that’s not likely,” he said heavily. “They have a network all their own for fencing goods. My poor little girl!”
“I’ll be all right.”
“No thanks to your so-called fiancé,” he growled. “What possessed you to let yourself be talked into marrying that wimp?” he demanded. “I thought you were head over heels in love with Evan Tremayne!”
“She is,” came a deep, amused drawl from the doorway as Evan sauntered in, carrying two cups of coffee. Anna flushed, and he grinned. “Still take it black, Duke?”
Duke Cochran chuckled, rising to take the cup from Evan and shake hands. “Yes, I still do. How are you?”
“Tired.” He glanced past him at Anna, who was pale but looked at least a little better. “We all are. It’s been a long week.”
“I kn
ow. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Couldn’t be helped.”
“Yes, it could,” Duke said angrily, running a restless hand through his hair. “I’m never around when I’m needed. Polly’s right, my family’s only been an afterthought, hasn’t it, sweetheart?” he asked Anna.
“It hasn’t,” she disagreed, her eyes soft. “You just can’t settle down. I understand. Most men love their freedom,” she added without daring to look at Evan.
“Freedom can cost too much sometimes,” Duke replied tersely.
“Amen,” Evan said under his breath.
Polly came in the door and stopped, her hand going to her throat as she looked into blue eyes she hadn’t seen for two long years. “Duke,” she whispered.
“Hello, pumpkin,” he said, smiling hesitantly. “Surprise, it’s really me.”
“You look…”
“If you say marvelous,” Duke threatened dryly, “I’ll smack you. Come here, woman, and give me a kiss. I’ve gone hungry too long already!”
“Oh, you!”
Polly blushed, but she went to him, lifting her face for a kiss that, when it came, made the other occupants of the room feel briefly like intruders. Polly was breathless when Duke let her go.
He chuckled huskily at her expression. “Worth the wait, wasn’t it, pumpkin?” he asked. “Glad to see me? God, I’m glad to see you! You look more beautiful every year.”
“You flatterer.” Polly faltered. “You always did have the devil’s own charm.”
“Doesn’t he look great?” Anna asked her mother.
“Yes, he does,” Polly had to admit. He was tanned and slender, no beer belly or excess weight. She averted her eyes to Anna. “But you don’t. How are you, darling?”
“Better,” Anna said doggedly. “When can I come home?”
“Your doctor said tomorrow, if you feel like it,” Polly said, beaming. “You’ll have to take it easy, of course, and they do want you to have some counseling,” she added.
“We can talk about that when I get home,” Anna replied. “I really don’t feel that traumatized.”
“You save that for when you’re asleep,” Evan said quietly. “You’ve been having nightmares. Painful ones, judging by the way you thrash around.”