CULLEN'S BRIDE

by Fiona Brand

Abruptly, her mood changed. Every ounce of irritation and heartache this situation had caused her surged back, redoubled. Mr. In-Control had had her on the back foot from the first moment. Literally. But he was on her turf now. She began to lather his scalp, taking her sweet time about it—her fingers sliding and massaging with a sinuous expertise.

  He groaned, a reluctant rumble of sound. "God, you're good at that."

  "Best hands in the business." She kneaded the tight muscles at his nape. "Now, what did you want to talk to me about?"

  "Have you laid a complaint with the police?"

  "I just made a statement."

  Some of the tension went out of his face, and she realised that at least a part of Cullen's grimness was caused by worry. Worry for the boy who'd attacked her.

  "Thank you," he said, a dark warmth filtering into his deep voice. "If you'd made a formal complaint, Dane wouldn't have stood a chance. With his record, they would've locked him up."

  "But he does need help."

  "He needs a lot of things, but at the moment it's all academic. He's in hospital. His father beat him so badly he can barely walk."

  Rachel could feel her eyes widening, her system responding to the sudden dousing shock of such brutal violence. She knew this stuff happened—in cities it was a given. But in Riverbend? Cullen's rebuke about small towns and big cities came back to her. It stung to realise that she was still reacting naively. That he'd been right about her. Vaguely, she heard Helen hustling the reluctant Reeses and Janine out the front door, the bustling, tidying sounds the younger woman made as she swept the floor clean. "Will he be all right?"

  "Physically, he'll heal."

  Rachel released a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding and began working the tight skin at the edge of Cullen's hairline, just above his temples.

  Cullen wondered if Rachel realised just how long she'd been washing his hair, or how sleekly sensual her fingers felt sliding across his wet scalp. He almost sighed with relief when she began rinsing him off, glad for the candy pink plastic cape covering his lap. It had been a mistake succumbing to the temptation to bait her, to have her touch him. He'd never had his hair washed so well or for so long, and he wondered if Rachel Sinclair got this close to all her male customers. If she did, there must be a town full of frustrated men.

  She'd implied that Helen was the draw card. And he supposed that if short, tight dresses and a slick line in sexy banter was what you were chasing, then she could be right. But Cullen had had his fill of women who wanted nothing more from him than stud service and the chance to fulfil their bad-boy fantasies.

  As if he'd conjured her up, Helen sauntered into view.

  "Everything's shipshape." She fixed Cullen with a considering gaze. "Unless you need a hand with something out here?"

  The water went off. Rachel reached for one of a half-dozen bottles on a shelf. "Mr. Logan's only in for a cut."

  "If you say so," Helen murmured, shooting Cullen another lazily assessing look as she wiggled her fingers at Rachel. "See you in the morning."

  Cullen heard the sound of a bottle being squeezed, caught the scent of something resinous, masculine. He clenched his jaw against another groan as Rachel began weaving her elegant hands through his hair again. After an eternity the water thumped on, and he would have sold his soul to immerse his body in the lukewarm wetness.

  The water went off with a shudder of pipes; then she began to towel his hair dry with firm regular sweeps that shouldn't have been sexy. Aside from the scalp massage, it was about the sexiest thing that had ever been done to him. She hovered over him, her loose dress tightening across breasts and hips that were unexpectedly full for her petite build. And as she worked, her feminine warmth and scent wrapped him, her thigh brushed against his, and more times than he could count, her breast came whisper-close to his taut bicep.

  "Short or just a trim?" Rachel asked with a brisk professionalism that was just a little too bright, too impersonal.

  Cullen concluded that either she was physically scared of him, or the raw, sexual awareness that was tying his gut into knots cut both ways. As soon as he'd considered that Rachel could be afraid of him, he discarded the thought. She hadn't shown any fear in the darkness and confusion of the alley last night, and her actions since he'd stepped into the salon had reflected curiosity and challenge, and more than a little irritation.

  Which left the second option.

  Every muscle in his body tightened as he absorbed the possibility that Rachel Sinclair was just as attracted to him as he was to her. Cursing savagely beneath his breath, Cullen tore open the Velcro fastening at his nape and jettisoned the cape. Having her touch him had been an even bigger mistake than he'd first thought. And judging from the unruly response of his body, it was way past time he left.

  Rachel stifled the urge to back up a step as Cullen flowed up and out of the chair, his wet hair falling sleekly to his shoulders. For the briefest moment she'd had the clear impression he was going to slide his hands around her waist and bury his mouth against hers. The vision was so graphic that she could almost feel the clasp of his hands, the tingling warmth of his lips pressing hers apart. And then he was walking away as abruptly as he'd done in the alley last night, and leaving her just as disoriented.

  Disoriented enough to follow him a few dazed steps, as if caught up in a violent slipstream. "Cullen?"

  Even though she was sure her voice had been so low he couldn't possibly have heard, he stopped just short of the door, his back to her—a rip in the sleeveless shirt giving her a glimpse of bronzed, heavily layered muscle. Numbly, Rachel searched for a reason to have stopped him. And it certainly wasn't going to be the truth, that touching Cullen had been like touching fire, and that the physicality of her own response shocked her. "Will anything happen to that boy's father?"

  Cullen half turned, as if reluctant to stay in the same room with her any longer than necessary. "Dane would have to complain to get his father charged, and then his mother and his brothers and sisters would be left on welfare."

  "But surely—"

  "Ever lived on welfare, Miss Sinclair?"

  "No."

  Cullen's scuffed riding boots made surprisingly little sound on her polished wood floor as he covered the remaining distance to the door. He paused, one hand on the jamb. "Thanks again, on Dane's behalf."

  Rachel lifted her chin at his determined dismissal of her and her own obscure, untenable hurt at that dismissal. "What's going to happen to him when he gets out of hospital?"

  Cullen's jaw tightened at the question, and this time, when he met Rachel's gaze, he reneged on looking away. Her eyes … he hadn't known what colour they were in the alley. He'd guessed blue. He was wrong. They were a soft, dark honey—unexpectedly fierce and just a little untamed, with the kind of fire a man could sink right into. And her scent… Her scent was driving him crazy, urging him to step closer and seek out all the shadowed places where her silky, delicate heat flared and burned.

  Need shuddered through him again, and he locked his muscles tight against it. She was five foot five at most, small and feminine compared to his build, but he didn't think she would refuse him—not at first, anyway. Rachel Sinclair, like a lot of women, was curious enough about him to at least try a taste. And for the first time in his life, Cullen knew he wouldn't be able to stop at a taste. Something about Rachel shook him to the core. She was finely built, almost fragile, and utterly feminine. He wanted to hold her, to protect and care for her, to see the somber intensity in her eyes dissolve into laughter. He wanted … everything that a past rooted in violence and despair had taught him he could never have.

  "Dane's going to stay with me," Cullen said, just when Rachel was certain he wasn't going to answer her question. "And I'm going to give him exactly what he needs—a job fixing my fences." His voice dropped, roughened. "Thanks for washing my hair. It'll probably stay clean for at least a month."

  A car barrelled past, breaking the moment. A horn blared, and someone c
alled out, laughing, and with that small interruption, Cullen stepped out into the sweltering stillness of early evening and strode across the road to a dark green four-wheel drive. When the vehicle pulled away, Rachel gave in to the compulsion to step out onto the pavement, under the overhang. The humidity had become unbearable, and it registered somewhere in the recesses of her mind that she needed a long, cool drink. Badly.

  A distant rumble sounded. The unmistakeable smell of rain hitting parched, dusty pavement wafted on a hot gust of wind as the truck accelerated down the main street and out of town. Rachel touched her palms to her cheeks and closed her eyes. She was trembling, her hair clinging damply to her brow and nape. I must be coming down with something, she thought dimly. Or maybe it's the time of month.

  Or maybe it was that she suddenly felt more lonely than she'd ever felt in her life. Lonelier even than when Adam had walked out on her and she'd spent two weeks of the holiday they'd planned to take together staring at a tropical sea, unable to believe her husband didn't love her.

  She closed her eyes on a familiar burst of pain. Correction. He did love her. That was the supreme irony, and the one fact she still hadn't come to grips with. After three years of what Rachel had considered a perfect marriage, he'd suddenly met someone. She still remembered his exact words. They'd burned into her, sinking to the centre of her being. "I love you," he'd said, "but I can't stay with you. I've met someone, and I can't get her out of my mind. I don't know what it is that I feel, but I can't bear to be in the same room with her and not touch her."

  Water slammed onto the tin roof of the covered way. Rachel's eyes snapped open at the violence of the sound. After only a few seconds the guttering overflowed, and a shift in the wind drove the rain under the shelter, pelting her with big, stinging drops. She knew she should move away, but the pounding rain after the still heat of the day was somehow cathartic. Stepping closer to the edge of the pavement, she lifted her face, tasting the rain in her mouth, the cleansing coolness of it. The salt.

  She wasn't crying. It was the rain wetting her cheeks, and not the weak, useless tears she'd given up long ago.

  And the tremors moving through her body were from the shock of dealing with Cullen Logan's uncompromising maleness. Somehow—God knows how, for he'd gone out of his way to be cool and abrasively dismissive—he'd stirred something in her that she'd thought had been burned away for good, a sexual need that was more intense, more overwhelming, than any she could ever remember feeling.

  It shook her that she could feel a sexual response to any man other than the man she'd chosen to marry. Maybe she was reacting naively again, but she knew her own nature. She was naturally intense and single-minded, and her feelings had always run deep. She'd learned to guard her emotions over the years and didn't trust easily, which was one of the reasons her failed marriage had hit her so hard. When she'd made her vows, they'd been the old-fashioned 'til-death-us-do-part kind.

  Logically, she knew that two years had passed since her marriage had effectively ended, that she was still human, still female. She'd expected to participate in sex in order to satisfy a man she could come to love sometime in the misty, uncertain future. But not now. Not with this burning immediacy. And certainly not with a man—a stranger—who didn't even like her.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Rachel looked blankly around, finally becoming aware of just where she was and that she was wet through. Thankfully, the street was deserted. Anyone with any sense was inside out of the rain, or at home relaxing after a hard day's work.

  She began locking up, grimacing at her sodden shoes, dripping hair and clinging dress. When she'd collected her holdall and the day's takings that hadn't been banked, she finally allowed herself to think about the letter she'd received in with the salon's mail that morning. The letter which was the final culmination of the lengthy legal proceedings that had neatly reduced her lingering hopes and dreams to a tabulated column of figures.

  Her jolting awareness of Cullen Logan might have been the catalyst to the draining outburst of emotion, but it was that cold, official sheet of paper which still lay folded in the bottom of her bag that had tipped her so far off balance—even though she'd known it was coming, had expected it for days now.

  After all, it wasn't every day she got divorced.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  Cole slotted his BMW into one of Fairley Hospital's narrow car parks. "I still think this is a dumb idea," he growled.

  "We've already had this argument," Rachel retorted, stepping out into the soft evening light.

  Cole's door closed with a thunk. "Do you really think you should get mixed up with the guy who tried to attack you last night? You don't know Dane Trask. Hell, you don't know the Trasks! The father, Frank, is a mean drunk who's already done time for assault and battery, and Dane's gearing up to be just like him."

  Rachel hitched the strap of her holdall over one shoulder. "I'm not denying that what Dane Trask did was wrong."

  "Then why waste your time going to see him?"

  She suppressed a sigh. There was no way she was going to tell Cole about the lawyer's letter. That she hadn't been able to bear the thought of her own company tonight and would have grasped at any reason at all to go out. If he had the slightest inkling that she was lonely or depressed, his protective instincts would slip into overdrive, and she'd already faced enough opposition from her family about her move back to Riverbend. Frustration welled up in her. Her father and brothers loved her, of that she had no doubt, but they loved her on their own terms. Sometimes Rachel felt as if a glass wall separated her from her family. They cared for her, but they pushed her away at the same time—for what they considered her own good. Every time she'd tried to change the relationship, to demand unconditional love, she'd run smack into that glass wall … until she'd learned to protect herself.

  Of course, her protection hadn't been one-hundred-percent perfect. Rachel's mouth curved bitterly. She hadn't thought she'd needed to guard her emotions with Adam; she hadn't known that particular glass wall existed until it was too late.

  "I want to see the boy who attacked me in a lighted room," she said coolly. "And maybe I want to find out just what kind of town it is that I've moved back to."

  "I'm coming with you."

  "No."

  Cole's attention shifted. Rachel followed the direction of his glare. Cullen's truck was parked nearby.

  A shiver of something very like anticipation eased down her spine, and she frowned at her reaction. So what if Cullen was here, too? He wouldn't be pleased to see her, and after the turmoil of this afternoon's meeting, she wasn't exactly jumping out of her skin to see him again, either. "If you're still concerned with warning me off Cullen," she declared irritably, "you're wasting your time. He's not the slightest bit interested in me, and I don't imagine I'll see him again except in passing."

  But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. Cullen was interested in her, even if it was only on the most basic, sexual level, and as hard as she tried, she couldn't dismiss him from her mind.

  Cole eyed her from across the bonnet. "You used to look like that when you were too little to reach the toy you wanted but you didn't want any of us to get it for you."

  "Right before I used to throw a screaming fit," she agreed.

  He tossed the keys. "I'll wait here," he conceded. "In half an hour's time, I'm coming in."

  Rachel was tempted to argue, but Cole had an enduring look to the set of his jaw. It was the same trademark Sinclair stubbornness that had had her brawny father and brothers hustling her out of their "rough country life" when she was barely seven years old, because they were certain she needed her Aunt Rose, a city school and "cultural opportunities" more than she needed their love. Arguing hadn't changed a thing then, and she knew it wouldn't shift Cole now. "Half an hour should be plenty of time."

  The receptionist gave her directions, and after dropping off a magazine for one of her clients,
Edna Simms, who'd just had surgery on her hip, Rachel located the men's surgical ward. Most of the patients had visitors. Dane was in an end bed against a wall, and the only person visiting him was a restlessly pacing Cullen, who, even in a white T-shirt and jeans, looked as out of place in the hospital ward as a big predatory cat would have been.

  His head swung in her direction the instant she stepped through the doors, and Rachel had to mentally brace herself against the impact of his light metallic gaze.

  She came to a stop at the foot of the bed. "How is he?"

  If anything, Cullen's grim, implacable expression became even more remote. "As well as can be expected." He gestured her toward a chair.

  Rachel shook her head at his offer of a seat. "I won't be staying long."

  Dane was awake and watchful, if slightly groggy. There was a glimmer of intelligence in the one eye that wasn't swollen closed. His mouth was puffed up and cut, and most of his face was discoloured. His ribs were taped. Even though she'd been prepared for him to look like he'd been run over by a truck, the reality was still shocking. "Hello, Dane."

  "'lo," he said rustily. He glanced at Cullen. "She the one?"

  Cullen inclined his head.

  Dane groaned. "Don' remember."

  "It doesn't matter," she said automatically, and suddenly it didn't. The incident in the alley faded when compared with the brutality that had been perpetrated on Dane, and Rachel's throat closed up at the abuse the boy had taken from the one man he should be able to trust. Instead, it appeared the only person who cared enough to look after Dane was the man everybody assumed didn't care for anyone or anything.

  There was an awkward silence while Rachel searched for something to say. "I … brought you some fruit." Setting her holdall down on the bed, she retrieved a bag of grapes she'd bought purely as a reflex. It wasn't until she was walking out of the shop that she'd realised she was buying her attacker a gift. But now she was glad she had. The contrast between Dane's lack of visitors and Edna Simms' overflow was startling. She stepped closer in order to show Dane what she'd brought. In the process, she had to move within inches of Cullen, and while they didn't actually touch, she could feel the animal heat radiating from his body, scent the faint but distinctive male musk of his skin overlaid by the civilised mantle of soap and freshly laundered clothing. That disturbing awareness overwhelmed her again, making her skin tighten and prickle, her senses become almost painfully acute. A shiver raised goose bumps, increasing the sensitivity of her skin until she could actually feel the rough weave of her linen trousers and vest.