by Diana Palmer
“Who is?” she replied quietly, with a cynicism far beyond her years. She tucked a lock of hair behind one small ear. “I’m content.”
“Content.” What a lukewarm word. It didn’t suit someone like Corrie, who had been bright and beautiful before Barry made a hell of her life. Truthfully he hadn’t done much to make her happy himself. All these years, he’d been thinking about himself, about protecting his heart from being broken, about preventing Corrie from taking over his life. He hadn’t given a thought to how badly he was hurting her with his indifference, his cruelty.
“There must have been times when you blamed me for a lot of your problems,” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I can make my own mistakes and pay for them. I don’t have to blame them on other people.”
He traced a pattern on the bar next to him. “I used to think that I didn’t, either.” His eyes were faraway, wistful. “Perhaps our view of ourselves is corrupted.”
“You don’t need anyone.” She laughed. “You’re completely self-sufficient.”
His head turned toward her. “All I have is Sandy,” he said quietly. “No one else. When she marries, I’ll be completely alone with my principles and my conscience and my noble ideals. Do you think they’ll keep me warm on long winter nights, Corrie, when I’m hungry for a woman in my arms in the darkness?”
She didn’t like that thought. “You don’t have any trouble getting women.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Getting them, no. I’m sinfully rich.”
“Everyone knows that.”
He nodded. “That’s the problem. At my age, I never know the real motive when women come on to me.”
It sounded as if he might be trying to tell her something. She didn’t know what. A brief silence fell between them. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked finally.
He nodded.
She went into the kitchen to make it, aware at intervals of his studious gaze from the living room. But he didn’t join her, not until she had everything on a tray. He met her at the kitchen door and carried the tray to the coffee table.
“I made some sugar cookies yesterday,” she said, indicating several of them on a small platter.
“And you think I have a sweet tooth?” he asked with a faint smile as he sat down beside her on the sofa. He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white linen shirt. He looked rakish with the top buttons of that shirt undone. She had to stifle a memory of opening them herself and touching him, kissing him, where the hair was thickest over those warm, firm muscles.
“You used to have one,” she said finally.
“I’m partial to lemon….” He bit into one and chuckled. She’d used lemon flavoring. “Were you expecting me?” he asked.
She was outraged. “Of course not! I like lemon myself, so don’t get arrogant, if you please.”
“Oh, I’ve given up arrogance, Corrie. It got too damned expensive. Put cream into this coffee for me, will you? No sugar.”
She complied. He couldn’t do it himself, of course. He sat there in his lordly way watching her perform these menial tasks for him with the arrogance he said he’d forsaken. Fat chance!
She handed him the china cup and watched him balance it, in its saucer, on his broad, muscular thigh. She realized that she was staring and averted her attention to her own cup.
“Did you really bake the cookies?” he asked conversationally.
She nodded. “I’ve been studying cookbooks lately. I haven’t made desserts in a long time. Dad was a borderline diabetic, remember? He wasn’t supposed to have sweets and I didn’t like to eat them in front of him.”
“You can make these as often as you like,” he murmured, finishing off another one. “They’re good.”
“Thanks.” She nibbled on one without tasting it. “How’s Sandy?”
“Missing you. So is Shep.”
“She brought him to see me,” she said.
“I know. He cries at night.”
Her face stiffened. “When I get a place of my own, I’ll bring him home.”
“There’s an easier way. Why don’t you come home?”
She dropped her eyes. “The ranch isn’t my home.”
He finished his coffee and put the cup and saucer down on the table. Then he leaned back and slowly undid the rest of the buttons of his shirt, his eyes holding Coreen’s relentlessly while he slid the fabric back from the thick salt-and-pepper hair that covered his broad chest.
Her lips parted as she tried to breathe normally. “Would you like some more coffee?” she asked a little breathlessly.
He shook his head slowly. He tugged the fabric out of his slacks and unfastened his belt. He slipped it out of the loops and tossed it to one side. Then he leaned back again, his legs splayed, and smiled at her with cool, dark arrogance. When he spoke, his voice was like velvet.
“Come here,” he said.
Her eyes widened like saucers. Her heart began to run. It wasn’t fair of him to taunt her this way, to invite her to make a fool of herself twice in one lifetime. Her lower lip trembled as she clamped down hard on her passion for him.
He began to smile, because he knew how hard it was for her to resist him. He’d always known.
“Afraid of me?” he taunted gently. “We’ll go at your pace. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
Her eyes burned with sudden tears as she remembered her own weakness, and what had followed it. “Are you having fun, Ted?” she asked, her voice choked. “Why don’t you hit me and see if that feels as good as mocking me does?” She got up and started to leave the room.
He was faster. She’d barely gone two feet before he had her. She was caught and turned and held, her cheek against thick hair and damp muscle, the clean scent of him in her nostrils, the warmth of his body enveloping her.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered at her temple. His voice wasn’t quite steady, and his hands were bruising against her back. “I’m not playing. Not this time.”
“It will be just like it was before,” she whispered brokenly, hitting him impotently with her fist. “You’ve hurt me enough…!”
His chest rose heavily under her cheek. “Yes. You, and myself. Now it all seems rather futile, although I meant well, at the time.” He tilted her chin up so that he could see her ravaged face. “Take a good look, honey. I’m not a young man anymore.”
“Did you ever notice how much younger Abby Ballenger is than Calhoun?” she asked solemnly.
He’d tried not to. The age difference between the long-married couple was pretty much the same as that between Ted and Coreen.
He frowned down at her. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed.”
“They have three sons,” she reminded him. “And they’ve been married forever. Abby would die for Calhoun.”
His jaw clenched. “No doubt he would for her, too.”
Her eyes fell to his jutting chin and just above it to the long, firm lines of his mouth. The warm embrace was making her weak, just as being close to him always had. She wanted to crawl into his arms and stay there forever. But she had to remember that her time with him was limited to brief kisses that he always regretted and, somehow, made her pay for.
She let her eyes fall to his chest with a long sigh. “Isn’t my time about up?” she asked.
“Up?”
“And by now, you should be feeling enough guilt to say something unpleasant and chase me away.”
He grimaced as he stared over her head toward the wall beyond. “Is that what I do?”
“It used to seem like it.”
He smoothed a lean hand over her hair and pressed her cheek closer to his bare flesh. The contact made his body ripple with pleasure. “I’ll probably always feel a little guilt,” he said deeply. “I could have spared you Barry.”
“How? By sacrificing yourself in his place?” she asked with soft bitterness.
“It wouldn’t have been a sacrifice.” His mouth eased down to
her forehead and pressed there softly, moving lazily to close both her eyes in turn. His warm hand cradled her cheek while his thumb moved over her lips. “Can you hear my heartbeat?” he whispered huskily. “It’s…very fast.”
His hand moved down, slowly, over her breast to cup it tenderly. The heel of his palm pushed against her. “So is yours,” he murmured. “Fast and hard.”
She had no secrets from him now. Her trembling seemed to accelerate at their proximity.
“Come closer,” he murmured as his mouth hovered over hers. “I want to feel your legs against mine.”
“Isn’t it…dangerous?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
The tender amusement belied the threat. She moved forward a step and caught her breath at the feel of his body so intimately.
“Don’t pull away,” he said at her lips. “I don’t mind if you know how aroused I am. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Her hands spread out on his bare chest, and they tingled at the contact.
“Caress me,” he said huskily, nibbling her lips. “Drive me mad.”
She brushed her palms against him and looked up into eyes that darkened with pleasure. “Do you like it?”
“I like it.” He nuzzled her nose with his, her mouth with his lips. The silence in the room was shattered by the sound of their ragged breathing. “I’d like it better if I could feel you with nothing between us.”
She must be crazy. In fact, she was convinced of it when her hands went to the fastening at her back and slipped it while her mouth answered the teasing of his lips. She pushed up her T-shirt and suddenly felt her breasts starkly bare against the thick mat of hair that covered his damp skin.
“God!” he groaned, going rigid.
She stood very still, her wide eyes seeking his for reassurance.
His hands were tremulous on her face as he tilted it up to his blazing eyes. “Open your mouth.” He bit off the words against her lips.
It was the last thing she understood in the turbulent minutes that followed. His hands, his mouth, the burning fever that no amount of contact seemed to quench made her mindless. His skin dragged against hers and she wept because she couldn’t get close enough. She told him so in shaky whispers against his devouring mouth.
“There’s only one way you and I will ever get close enough to each other,” he said roughly. “And you know exactly what it is.”
“Yes,” she moaned. Her arms contracted around his bare back, her hands digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. “Ted!”
He bent suddenly and lifted her into his arms. His eyes frightened her with their glitter. He hesitated, asking a question that he didn’t have to put into words.
She buried her face in his throat and clung to him, shivering. Whatever he did now, it would be all right. If she had nothing else, she’d have now.
His arms shuddered as he stood there, feverish, aching for her.
“At least…make me pregnant,” she whispered, anguished. “Give me that, if I can have nothing more.”
The words shocked him. He looked down at the warm burden in his arms and felt them all the way to his heart. “Corrie!” he whispered.
Her eyes opened, dazed, helpless. “Is it really so shocking a thing to ask?” she asked miserably. “I know you don’t want commitment. I won’t ask anything of you, in case you’re worried about that.”
He couldn’t speak. He clasped her to his heart and rocked her, poleaxed, lost for words.
“Oh, Ted, don’t you want a child?” she asked in a wobbly whisper. “I’d take ever such good care of him, or her. And you could come and visit when you wanted to…”
His eyes closed on a harsh groan, and for an instant his arms hurt her.
She bit her lower lip. He hadn’t moved. Not a step. He just stood there holding her, cradling her. Probably feeling sorry for her as he realized the depths of her humiliation, she thought miserably. He didn’t know what to do now.
She forced herself to breathe slowly, so that her pulse rate began to lessen a little. She didn’t know how she was going to ever look him in the eye again. She’d humbled herself too far this time, gambled for stakes that suddenly seemed impossibly high. When would she ever learn?
“Please put me down now, Ted,” she said with the little bit of dignity she retained.
His mouth slid over her wet eyes and closed them. He didn’t put her down. He moved toward the armchair and slowly dropped down into it, cradling her like treasure.
“Ted?” she repeated.
His cheek rubbed against hers as he searched blindly for her mouth. It was wet. But she couldn’t think anymore, because he was kissing her. It felt very much like desperation, so urgent that she felt the bruising pressure of his mouth and arms like a brand.
Her hand went up to his lean face and traced its line from the temple. She touched his closed eye and felt the moisture that drained from it. It took a minute to register, and then her eyes flew open and she pulled back from him.
His pale eyes were as wet as his cheek. He stared into hers without embarrassment, without subterfuge.
“Lie still,” he said roughly. He dealt with the disheveled fabric that only half concealed her and tossed it carelessly onto the floor. His hand traced her bare breasts, lingering on the long scar across one, tenderly exploring her in a silence that blazed with hope.
He bent toward her and, with aching tenderness, drew his mouth over the length of the scar.
He nuzzled the hard nipple with his nose and then his mouth, testing its firmness until she gasped.
“Would it embarrass you to breast-feed a child?” he whispered then.
Hope flared through her like wildfire. “No!”
His mouth opened on her with gentle hunger. He arched her up to his ardent lips and held her there, in a bow. “I probably won’t be as fertile as a young man,” he said gruffly. “It may take longer.”
She gasped, cradling his face to her. She trembled with joy as understanding dawned.
He buried his lips between her breasts and he kissed his way down to her waistline, where his mouth rested hungrily for a long time.
When he finally came up for air, he moved them both to the sofa, where he stretched out with an exhausted Corrie in his arms. His long legs tangled with hers intimately, casually, as if they’d lain together like this all their lives.
His head rested on a sofa pillow while hers lay over his heart and listened to its heavy, hard beat. Skin against skin, breath against breath. The intimacy was as exciting as it was unexpected.
“Why did you stop?” she asked drowsily.
His hand smoothed down her back to her waist. “We aren’t going to make our first child until we’re married,” he said softly.
She stiffened. “But…but you said…”
He rolled her over onto her back and looked down into her wide, tender blue eyes hungrily. “I said that we could try to make a baby together,” he whispered. “I didn’t say that I wanted our child to be illegitimate.”
“You don’t want to get married.”
He kissed away the quick tears, smiling with cynical self-reproach. “No, I don’t,” he agreed quietly. “I think you’ll grow tired of me in time and wish you’d waited for a younger man to love. But I suppose I’ll have to deal with that when the time comes.”
She searched his beloved face with eyes that worshiped it. “You’ll have a very long wait,” she whispered. “I fell in love with you when I was barely twenty. I’ve loved you every day since. I’d give up my home, my self-respect, my honor…my very life for you.”
Dark color burned along his cheekbones. “Corrie…”
“It’s all right, Ted. I know that you don’t feel that way about me,” she continued with quiet dignity. “But maybe after the children are born and you grow to love them, you’ll be happy.”
He was so choked with feeling that he could hardly speak. He touched her soft mouth lightly, searching for words. “It’s so damned hard for me,” he
began.
She put her fingers over his mouth with a soft sigh. “You don’t have to say a thing.”
His pale eyes slid down her body and she winced.
“I’m sorry about the scar,” she said, looking at it. “Maybe it will fade.”
“Do you think I care?” he ground out.
She winced again at his tone. “Ted…”
“Your breasts are perfect,” he said flatly. “Scar or no scar. You’re perfect to me. You always have been. Always!”
She didn’t know how to answer that.
He ran a rough hand through his damp hair, looked down at her and groaned. “I can’t handle any more of this without doing something about it,” he said huskily, and rolled away from her.
He got to his feet, walking away to the kitchen. He came back minutes later with a fresh pot of coffee. By then, Corrie had her clothing back in its former order and was trying not to meet his eyes.
He poured coffee, aware of her shy glances at his broad, bare chest.
“Like what you see?” he chided gently.
She glared at him. “You don’t have to gloat.”
“Sure I do.” He chuckled. “It isn’t every day that a woman offers herself up like a living sacrifice. Isn’t that what they used to do with virgins in primitive times—offer them to some frightening monster as a deterrent?”
“You’re not a monster,” she returned, lifting her coffee to her mouth. “And I’m not afraid of you.”
“I noticed,” he said dryly. He leaned back, sliding an affectionate arm around her shoulders to draw her to his chest again. He lifted his legs onto the coffee table and crossed them lazily. “Where do you want to be married?”
Her eyes darted up to his face. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Where?”
“Jacobsville, then. And Sandy can be maid of honor.”
“Since you’re so keen on the Ballengers, I’ll ask Calhoun to be best man.”
She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic, but it sounded that way. She was quiet.
He tilted her chin. “You’re like an open book to me,” he said solemnly. “I wasn’t trying to sound cynical. Did I?”