DEFENDING HIS OWN

by Beverly Barton

  "I did the same thing," he said. "I came down about thirty minutes ago and swiped some of your brandy."

  "Obviously it didn't help you go to sleep." She clenched her hands, then unclenched them, repeating the process several times. She wished he hadn't come downstairs and found her alone and restless. He'd know she couldn't stop thinking about him, couldn't make herself forget the feel of his arms around her, the strength of his arousal pressing against her.

  "Since neither of us can sleep, how about taking a ride?" Holding his breath, he waited for her reply.

  "A ride?" She scooted to the edge of the sofa, knowing there was more at stake than just a moonlight drive. "That sounds like a great idea." Standing, she smiled at him, then rushed past him and out into the hallway. "Give me a minute to put on some clothes," she said softly, then ran up the stairs.

  He checked his back pocket for his wallet, then thought about his gun and holster lying on his nightstand. He hurried upstairs, retrieved his gun and put on his jacket, then walked down the hall to Simon Roarke's bedroom. He knocked softly. Within seconds Roarke cracked the door and peered out at him.

  "What's up?"

  "Deborah and I are going for a ride," Ashe said. "I wanted you to know I'd be out of the house for a while."

  "Yeah, sure. No problem." Simon grinned, something the man didn't do often.

  "Don't go reading anything into this." Ashe turned to leave.

  Opening the door, Roarke laid his hand on Ashe's shoulder, gripping him firmly. "She's the one, isn't she?"

  Ashe stiffened at his friend's words. "The one what?"

  "The one you told me about that night six months ago when we both got stinking drunk and wound up crying all over each other."

  Ashe didn't like to remember that night; he'd thought Roarke would never remind him. "Yeah, she's the one."

  Pulling away, Ashe ran his hand through his hair, straightened his jacket and headed downstairs. He paced the marble-floored entrance hall until Deborah descended the stairs wearing a pair of olive green cotton twill pants and a baggy cotton sweater in an olive-and-cream stripe.

  "Let's go," she said, her chest rising and falling with quick, panting little breaths.

  "You want to take your Caddy or my rental car?"

  She tossed him a set of keys. "The Caddy."

  He slipped his arm around her waist and they rushed outside, the cool night air assaulting them the minute they opened the door.

  "I should get you a set of keys to the Caddy," she said as he helped her inside.

  He leaned down, giving her a quick kiss, then closed the passenger door and raced around to the other side of the car.

  He knew where he was going to take her; he'd known the minute he'd suggested the ride. It hadn't been a premeditated idea, just something that hit him in a flash. In the dark confines of the car, he could hear her breathing, could smell that heady scent of flowery bath oil mixed with the musty scent of woman. He started the Caddy and backed out of the drive.

  She waited for him to ask her where she wanted to go. He didn't ask. It didn't take her long to realize the direction in which he was headed. Dear God, no! Surely he wasn't taking her there. Was he that insensitive? Didn't he realize she'd never been back since that night?

  The road leading down to the river was dark, lonesome and flanked on both sides by heavily wooded areas. Deborah closed her eyes, shutting out the sight, clenching her teeth in an effort not to scream. How could he do this to her!

  "Please take me home." Her voice wavered slightly.

  "I thought you wanted to take a ride." He kept his gaze focused on the view ahead of him.

  "I don't want to go down to the river."

  "Why not?"

  "You know damn well why not."

  "I want you to tell me." He glanced at her and wished he hadn't. Her face was barely visible in the moonlight, but he could feel the tension in her body and make out the anger etched on her features.

  "Take me home, Ashe. Now!"

  He continued driving toward the river. "It's time we talked. Really talked. We need to clear up a few things before we make love."

  "Before we make… Why, you arrogant bastard! You think you're going to take me down to the river and screw me again and then walk out of my life and never look back. Well, you'd better think again. I'm not some lovesick teenager who believes in fairy tales."

  "No, you're not." He pulled the Cadillac off the road and onto a narrow dirt lane surrounded by trees. "You're a woman who wants to be made love to very badly, and I'm the man who is dying to love you."

  When he reached out to touch her, she jerked away from him. "Don't. I don't want you. Do you hear me? I do not want you."

  "Honey, stop lying to yourself. Do you think I like knowing I'm so hung up on you I can't think about anything else? Do you honestly think you're the only one with bad memories about that night?"

  "Oh, I know all about your bad memories!" Whipping around in the seat, she faced him. "You let your anger with Whitney and your need for a woman overcome your better judgment, and you screwed me. Then afterward you were filled with regret."

  He jerked her into his arms, lowered his head and whispered against her lips. "Stop saying I screwed you, dammit! It wasn't like that and you know it. I made love to you, Deborah."

  Struggling to free herself, she laughed in his face. "You didn't make love to me, you sc—"

  He kissed her hard and fast, adeptly silencing her. She pulled away as much as he would allow and glared at him.

  "Maybe I wasn't in love with you," he admitted. "But I did love you. I'd loved you since we were kids. You were one of my best friends."

  The tears welled up inside her; her chest ached from restraint. This was what she didn't want—what she couldn't bear. "All right. We made love. But you regretted it. You said it could never happen again."

  "I cared too much about you to hurt you by pretending there could be more for us. I felt like a heel, but I did what I thought was best for you."

  She took a deep breath. "I hated you after that night, you know. But all the while I swore to myself I despised you, I kept praying you'd come and tell me you loved me. I was such a fool."

  "And when two months went by and I didn't come to you, you decided to get revenge. All that love turned to hate so quickly."

  "What are you talking about? I admit I thought about how I'd like to toss you into a pool of piranhas, but that's as far as my seeking revenge went." She scooted away from him when he loosened his hold on her. "Besides, you didn't stick around long enough for me to plot any elaborate revenge schemes."

  "You don't call siccing your daddy on me revenge?"

  Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth on a silent gasp, then shook her head. "What—what do you mean, siccing my daddy on you?"

  "Are you pretending you've forgotten or are you trying to tell me you honestly don't know what I'm talking about?"

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," she said.

  "Then let me refresh your memory." Turning sideways, Ashe leaned his back against the door, crossed his arms over his chest and rested his head on the side window. "About two months after our night down here—" moving his head from side to side, he glanced out at the starlit sky, the dark waters of the Tennessee River and the towering trees tipped with moonlight "—the police chief hauled my rear end downtown. And who do you think was waiting for us when we got to the police station?"

  Deborah's stomach did a nervous flip-flop. "Daddy?"

  "Bingo! Wallace Vaughn himself, fit to be tied and ready to string me up for raping his little girl."

  "Raping!" The blood soared through Deborah, her heartbeat wild, the pounding beat deafening to her own ears.

  "Yeah, that was my reaction," Ashe said, uncertain whether to accept Deborah's shock at face value or remain suspicious. "But the D.A. was there with your daddy and he assured me that they weren't kidding. They were accusing me of rape, and when I told them that the charge would never stick, t
hey both laughed in my face."

  "I had no idea Daddy could have done anything so—"

  "You didn't go crying to your Daddy?" All these years he had been so sure Deborah had lied to her father, that she had made him believe that, at the very least, Ashe had seduced her, and at the worst, had taken her by brute force.

  "I didn't tell my father anything." Deborah scooted to the far side of the car, her back up against the door, she and Ashe glaring at each other in the semidarkness.

  "Why the hell lie to me now?" He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. God, help him, he never thought he would feel such bitter anger again, that confronting her with what she'd done would resurrect the hatred he'd felt—for Wallace Vaughn, for the whole town of Sheffield, and, yes, for Deborah herself.

  Deborah lifted her feet up on tiptoes, tensing her legs as she ran her hands up and down the tops of her thighs. "I never told Daddy about our … about our making love that night. I told my mother." I had to tell her. I was seventeen and pregnant by a man who didn't love me or want me. I didn't know what else to do.

  "You told Miss Carol?"

  "I needed someone to talk to about what had happened." About the fact that I was carrying your child. "Who else would I have gone to other than my own mother?"

  "Did you tell your mother that I'd forced you?" Cold shivers covered Ashe like a blanket of frost spreading across the earth on a winter night.

  "No. I told my mother the truth, all of it. She'd known, of course, that I'd left the country club with you that night and she knew why."

  "I'm surprised your father didn't hunt us down."

  "He didn't know I was with you. He didn't see me leave," Deborah said. "Mother told him I was spending the night with a girlfriend after the engagement party."

  "I know Miss Carol often kept the complete truth from your father in order to maintain peace, so why did she feel it necessary to tell him about what had happened between you and me that night?"

  Because I was pregnant! "I was very upset, very unhappy. Mother thought she was doing the right thing by telling Daddy. She couldn't have known what he'd do. And I never knew anything about what he did. Obviously, Daddy realized what a mistake he'd made. You were never arrested. If you had been, I would have told the truth. I would have made them understand that what happened that night was my fault, not yours."

  "Deborah?"

  "Well, it was, wasn't it? I mean, I did throw myself at you and practically beg you to make love to me, didn't I?"

  "If I'd been more of a man and less a boy that night, I'd have turned you down and saved us both a lot of misery."

  "And that's what the memory of that night has been for you, hasn't it, a misery?" Deborah shut her eyes, capturing her tears beneath closed lids.

  Dear God, no! The results had been a misery, but not that night. Never that night! "No, honey, that's not true. The memory of that night is bittersweet for me."

  "More bitter than sweet." Swallowing her tears, she lowered her head, wrapped one arm across her stomach and cupped the side of her face in her other hand. "That's why you left town, wasn't it? To get away from me?"

  "I left town because your father and the D.A. gave me no other choice." Ashe slid across the seat, grabbed Deborah by the shoulders and shook her gently several times. "Look at me, dammit." With her head still bowed, she raised her eyes to meet his. "Your father told me that if I didn't leave town and never come back, he'd make sure I did time for rape. He wanted me out of your life for good."

  "No, he wouldn't have… He knew. Oh, Ashe, he knew."

  "He knew what?" Ashe gripped her shoulders, tightening his hold when she didn't immediately respond.

  "He knew I was—" She'd almost said pregnant with your baby. "He knew I loved you, that I would never have testified against you, that I would have made a fool of myself to protect you."

  A searing pain ripped through Ashe, the hot, cauterizing pain of truth, killing the festering infection of lies and suspicions, preventing him from clinging to past resentments.

  "Dear God, Deborah. All these years I've thought…" He pulled her into his arms. She trembled, and he knew she was on the verge of tears, that she was holding them in check, being strong. He stroked her back; she laid her head on his chest.

  She had not betrayed him. She hadn't even told her father, only her mother. She had never accused him of forcing her or seducing her. Lies. All lies. Wallace Vaughn's lies to force Ashe out of Deborah's life. Had the old man been that afraid that sooner or later Ashe would destroy Deborah's life?

  Ashe found himself kissing the side of her face, along her hairline, one hand continuing to stroke her back while he threaded the fingers of his other hand through her hair, caressing her tenderly.

  "Have you hated me all these years, Ashe?" she asked, her voice a whisper against his chest.

  "I've hated you. I've hated myself. Hell, I've hated just about everyone and everything associated with my past." When she gazed up at him, he dotted her forehead with kisses. "But I never hated what we shared that night, the feelings inside me when we made love. It had never been like that for me before." He swallowed hard. "And it's never been that way for me again. Not ever."

  "Oh, Ashe." She slipped her arms around him, burrowing her body into his, seeking and finding a closer joining.

  He took her mouth like a dying man clinging to life, as if without the taste of her he could not go on. She accepted the kiss, returning it full measure, her hands clawing at his back, inching their way up beneath his jacket, yanking his shirt from his slacks, making contact with his naked flesh. Ashe thrust his tongue deeper into her mouth, their tongues mating furiously.

  Breathless, their lips separated, but they clung to each other, Deborah unbuttoning Ashe's shirt, Ashe lifting Deborah's sweater up and under her arms.

  "I've wanted you since that first day I came back to town." He nuzzled her neck with his nose as he lifted his hand to her lace-covered breast. "I've called myself every kind of fool, but nothing's eased this ache inside me."

  She curled her index finger around a swirl of dark chest hair, then leaned over to kiss one tiny nipple. Ashe groaned. "I hated you for making me want you again," she said. "I swore no one would ever hurt me the way you did, and here I am throwing myself at you again as if I were seventeen."

  "No, honey, no." He took her face in both his hands, looking deep into her eyes, smiling his irresistible smile. "This works both ways. I want you and you want me. Neither of us are kids. We're two responsible adults who are as frustrated as hell."

  She laughed. "Ashe, I don't know if I can handle this, what I'm feeling. It scares me. It scares me more now than it did when I was seventeen." She circled his neck with her arms, pressing her cheek against his. "When I was seventeen I was so in love with you that nothing we did seemed wrong. I didn't know the first thing about sex. Now … well, now I'm aching with wanting you. It's different now. It's—"

  "It's right this time, honey," he said against her lips. "No fairy tales, no declarations of undying love, just a man and a woman who want each other desperately. Mutual desire."

  "Yes." She nodded. "Mutual desire." You're wrong, she wanted to shout. It isn't all that different now. I'm still in love with you and you still don't return that love.

  "Let's vanquish all those bad memories," he said. "Let's lay the past to rest. Tonight."

  His kiss was less frantic this time, more tender and giving, yet as hot and needy as the one before. There was no way to make him understand that she could never lay the past to rest, that Allen was the embodiment of that night so long ago when a young and foolish girl had given herself to a man who didn't love her.

  Ashe held her in his arms, burying his face in her neck, breathing in the sweet fragrance of her hair. "We can't make love back at your house and I know you don't want to make love here, in the car, the way we did that night. Where can we go, honey? A motel room seems cheap and I want this night to be special for you—for us."

  "You'
re wrong about my not wanting to make love here and now, in the car," she said. "I do."

  "Why would you want to—"

  "I'm not sure I can explain how I feel, but… Well, it would somehow validate that first time. I know it sounds crazy, but… I need for us to make love here, now, in the car, the way we did that night when… Please, Ashe, make love to me."

  "That's exactly what you said to me that night." And damn his rotten soul, he hadn't been able to resist her. She had been the sweetest temptation he'd ever known—and she still was.

  "I guess I'm still begging." A lone tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

  Ashe kissed the teardrop. "No, Deborah, I'm the one doing the begging this time. I'm the one who'll die if I can't have you. I'm the one willing to do anything to make you happy, to see you smile, to make your forget."

  He actually remembered every word she'd said to him that night when she'd told him she wanted to make him happy, wanted to make him forget Whitney, wanted to make him smile again. She had pleaded with him to make love to her, saying she'd die if he didn't.

  "You remember what I said."

  "Every word." He lifted her sweater up and off, tossing it into the back seat, then unhooked her bra and eased it off her shoulders. "And I remember how you looked and how you felt." He covered both breasts with his hands and planted a row of kisses from her collarbone to her shoulder. "And the smell of you. My sweet, innocent Deborah."

  He licked the tip of her breast; she moaned. He unsnapped and unzipped her slacks; she shoved his jacket off his shoulders. Ashe removed his shoulder holster, laying it on the dashboard before removing his shirt.

  She kissed his chest, tiny, loving nicks. He tugged her slacks down and off her legs, throwing them on top of her sweater. She shivered when he dipped his hand beneath the elastic of her silky panties and cupped her buttocks, lifting her up and over him as he slid down onto the seat, his head braced against the armrest on the door.

  While he suckled at her breasts, his fingers delved between the delicate folds of her body, finding the sensitive, hidden peak. She unzipped his trousers and reached inside to cover his arousal with the palm of her hand. Their kisses grew hotter, harder, longer, as they moved to the rhythm of nature's mating music, their bodies straining for closer and closer contact.