CULLEN'S BRIDE

by Fiona Brand

  A morepork hooted somewhere outside and was answered by a more distant cry, the fridge hummed steadily, and the sturdy old house settled in for the night with creaks and groans that were oddly peaceful.

  The scrape of Rachel's chair as she got to her feet shattered the momentary quiet. "Is that why you won't let yourself get close to anyone?" she demanded, stalking around the table toward him. "The reason we can't have a normal relationship is because you'd sooner roll over for a creep like Hayward than prove how wrong everyone has been?" She jabbed a finger at his chest, and the smooth languorous flow of her voice metamorphosed into cool and clipped, "Or maybe it's easier for you to believe your bad press than take a shot at commitment? I never would have labelled you a coward, Cullen."

  Cullen caught Rachel's hand and clenched his jaw against the need to jerk her against him and drown in her sweet scent, her delicious softness. He'd touched her more today than he ever had, except for the times when they'd almost made love, then finally had made love, and it was driving him crazy. "The hell with Hayward and his games," he rasped. "If I wanted to stay in Riverbend, he wouldn't stop me."

  She blinked and shook her head. "So, why are you leaving?"

  Cullen stared at her in open disbelief. "Haven't you heard a word I've ever said? I'm not the kind of guy you should be spending any time with at all! I'm too rough, too damned hard to make good husband and father material."

  Her tawny eyes flared, making her skin seem even creamier, her hair richer, darker, and Cullen realised that despite Rachel's apparent calm, she wasn't backing off an inch. She was furious, but controlled with it, and the knowledge made his heart slam and his blood pound thickly though his veins. He found he liked fighting with her. The thought should have appalled him, sent him running, but instead he was aroused. It was all he could do to keep from taking her down to the floor, stripping her clothes off, shoving her beneath him and doing the very thing that had got them in this mess in the first place.

  "And I thought I was dumb as a post about relationships," she drawled. "How would you know, when you've obviously never had one!"

  Cullen should have expected the blow, given his knowledge of Rachel's temper but her fist shooting toward his chest took him by surprise. Even so, his hand shot up, catching her wrist before the punch could land. The movement swung her body into his. Her breasts flattened against his chest, their knees bumped, and her belly fetched up against the solid, aching ridge of his sex. A groan ripped from Cullen's throat. Before he could control the primitive urge, his hips jerked, grinding himself even deeper, harder, against her soft warmth. Rachel wasn't moving; she was simply resting against him, accepting his hold on her hand and wrist. Accepting the unruly pressure of his sex nudging her stomach.

  Slowly, breathing hard with the effort, Cullen steadied her, then stepped away. When he spoke, the words were scraped from his throat, guttural with the effort of forcing each dark syllable out. "Fifteen years ago, in just about this precise spot, I hit my father hard enough to put a hairline fracture in his jaw. My knuckles were bruised and split from that one blow."

  Rachel was breathing just as fast as he was, and he saw with a jolt that she was aroused as well as angry. Another choking wave of lust slammed through him. Damn, this wasn't helping. She should be staring him down with a haughty, patrician look instead of watching him with frank sensual hunger.

  "He'd just hit a woman," she snapped. "He'd just hit you. Anyone would have hit him back!"

  "Not everyone would have enjoyed it."

  The harsh words chilled Rachel. Moments ago Cullen had been a scant breath away from kissing her, and more. She could still feel the heated imprint of his body, the tingling pressure where his heavy arousal had rocked into her stomach.

  "Sometimes," he continued tightly, "I wake up at night, sweating, and I can feel what it was like to hit him. How much I wanted to hit him again, and keep on hitting him. It makes me sick to my stomach. If I ever lost control—" His chest expanded. "I lost control when I made love to you. I can't allow that to happen again. If I can lose control and make love to you, I can lose control and harm you."

  "You wouldn't harm me."

  Cullen cut her a look that was savage with impatience. "Can you say that for sure? Will you be able to tell our child that he or she is safe?"

  Rachel lifted her chin. "I know you. You would no more hurt me than any of my brothers would."

  "I won't trust myself in a relationship," he said from between gritted teeth. "I know how insidious violence is—I've read enough literature on the subject. If you need an example, look at the Trasks. Generation after generation of families get caught up in its cycle."

  "You broke the cycle."

  "Did I?" he asked bleakly. "Baby, I joined the SAS. In anyone's book, that's gotta be an escalation."

  Rachel stared at Cullen, at the sweat sheening his skin, at the implacable set to his jaw, and finally grasped the essence behind every warning he'd ever given her.

  He wasn't going to budge.

  Cullen came from violence. He believed he would live with it forever.

  Rachel didn't believe that. Not for a minute. From the first touch of his hand on hers in the alley behind her salon, she'd sensed his inner strength and gentleness. But Cullen believed it, and that was what counted. And he backed his belief with the granite will which was the very core of the strength she loved.

  The magnitude of the risk she'd taken with this marriage hit her. She'd been certain that the emotion she sensed in Cullen would grow, that she could reach him. Now she saw that the odds of her gamble succeeding weren't just long, they were almost nonexistent. Cullen wanted her physically, but no matter what she said, what she did, he would go on believing that he was dangerous to know. And way too dangerous to live with.

  Panic and defeat cascaded through her, drawing her skin tight, making her breath come faster. She'd told her brothers that she'd trapped Cullen into marriage. She'd been half joking at the time, but now she knew just how much of a trap it was. He wanted her, yes, but her very proximity only served to remind him of everything he thought be couldn't have.

  Her baby wouldn't have a father. The family she'd always yearned for would now only consist of two people, because there wouldn't be another man for her, and there wouldn't be any more children. Unless she could change the way Cullen saw himself.

  God help her, but she couldn't give up. She still had time, about seven months. But suddenly that didn't seem nearly long enough. She had the unnerving conviction that a lifetime would be too short.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  Several weeks later Cullen met the engineer at his damaged bridge. Kevin Shortland was a tall, stringy man, with thick glasses perched on the high, thin arch of his nose. He looked more suited to academia than engineering, but the dark, tea-coloured tan of his skin proclaimed that he spent more time outside than he did in.

  After trying unsuccessfully to get one of the local companies out to assess the damage, Cullen had finally given up and contacted an Auckland based firm, which had meant further frustrating delays and more expense. Like his difficulty in obtaining casual labour or contractors, getting anyone local to come out had proved to be near impossible.

  "Don't drive on it," Shortland said bluntly. "The last series of floods undermined the foundations. Everything else about the bridge is fine. The timber's hardwood, all the beams are good, but you're going to have to get a crew in to sink some new piles and reinforce the old ones."

  "We haven't been driving on it." Cullen straightened from his inspection of the cutaway bank. Luckily the bridge only provided access to the western corner of the farm, where his land butted up against Sinclair land. The grazing was limited because of the meandering nature of the river and the sudden onset of the high country which reared overhead. Dane had shifted all the cattle to the other side of the river and was using the lush grazing on the river flats for the mares and their foals. The bridge was a headache,
though. He could dismantle it, since he was going to sell anyway, but the bridge in itself was valuable and would cost a great deal of money to replace. Anyone buying the farm would want it intact. Depending on how quickly the property sold, he would have to undertake the repair himself, or at least have estimates and plans available for any interested parties.

  They clambered up the bank and strode across the broad, high structure.

  Kevin shook his head and glanced up at the dark hills. "That's one hell of a watershed you've got up there."

  Cullen studied the steep, wild terrain. The lower slopes were tawny with grass; the higher his gaze roved, the scrubbier the vegetation became, until the bush took over entirely. Here and there the rainforest had been ripped away by slips, the light scars stark evidence of the violent deluges that periodically plunged down the hillsides. His glance slid to the innocent chuckle of water tumbling beneath the bridge. "It's a real bitch," he agreed.

  * * *

  When Cullen pulled up at the house that evening, he was earlier than usual and too tired to find something else to fill his time. He'd changed oil and serviced machinery until everything was running more smoothly than it ever had. Every pump, every water trough, every electric fence, was working perfectly. And Dane had the horses in hand. The mares hung around him as if he were some prime stud they wanted to impress, and even the stallions had calmed down enough that he could halter them.

  Pushing the door of the truck open, he swung out and instantly stiffened. He could hear music playing—soft classical music—and lights glowed in more than one room, giving the house a life and vitality it usually lacked…

  Stepping up onto the verandah, he levered his work boots off and carried them around to the mudroom. After tossing his socks and shirt in the laundry basket and washing the dirt off his hands, he made his way upstairs. And stopped.

  Rachel was in his room.

  Her hair was dragged back in a ponytail. She looked about sixteen in leggings and socks and an oversize sweater, and she was measuring his window. His gaze shifted to the bed, with its plain dark blue coverlet. It was rumpled, as if she'd sat on it. Or maybe even lain down.

  His chest expanded on a sudden intake of air as he tried to block that particular vision out. How in hell was he supposed to sleep if he kept seeing Rachel in his bed? If he kept smelling her scent on his pillow?

  Clenching his jaw against the startled, defiant look she directed at him, he snagged fresh clothing from his drawer and strode into the bathroom. He turned on the shower with a savage flick of his wrist, then peeled his jeans off with considerably more care.

  He hurt. Ah, God, he burned. And when he stood under the ice-cold stream and soaped himself, he groaned out loud. Hell's teeth. Her soap. Her shampoo. He could smell her on him night and day. He was going to have to take a trip into town and buy soap that didn't smell of Rachel. Something that didn't drive him crazy every time he had to take a breath.

  By the time he got out of the shower, she'd left his room, but the bed was still rumpled, and he knew with savage certainty that he wasn't going to be able to sleep in it that night. He could doss down in the barn; but that held too many bad memories. He would spend the night haunted by ghosts, reliving a past that should never have been lived through even once. The couches in the lounge were out; they were too short for his long frame. And, like the bed, they smelled of Rachel.

  * * *

  Later on that evening, Rachel caught Cullen just before he went into his study. He looked even grimmer than he had when he'd caught her in the holy of holies, his room.

  As if he had a thing to hide.

  He lived as barrenly as a monk. No photographs, no knickknacks of any kind, just that big gun in his drawer. Not that she'd done anything as intrusive as search through his personal things. He quite simply didn't have anything personal lying around.

  "I want to paint the house," she said baldly, crossing both fingers behind her back, not because she was lying, but because painting the house wasn't all she hoped to achieve. From the first moment she'd seen the Logan homestead, she'd itched to do something with it. The big old house was just crying out for some attention. She intended to make it into the home that Cullen had never had. The home that she had always wanted.

  Cullen's narrowed gaze met hers. "No."

  Rachel bristled at the flat denial. Lately there was an air of compressed savagery about Cullen; he was like a big cornered cat waiting to spring, lending credence to his statement that he was lousy family material. He certainly wasn't adjusting well to living with her, if living together was what you called their odd, fractured existence. "What do you mean, no?"

  Air hissed from between his teeth. If Rachel wanted to be generous, she would have said he sounded weary, that he'd been up before dawn and had worked sixteen hours straight—and all of it brutally hard physical labour. But he didn't sound tired. He sounded frustrated, impatient and downright bad-tempered.

  "You won't be doing the painting. Or any climbing on ladders or lifting."

  Rachel stiffened at the list of don'ts. For weeks now Cullen had ignored her. Most of the time she ate alone, which was probably just as well in the mornings, because she was still losing her breakfast on a regular basis. The few times their paths crossed he was polite, but did little more than acknowledge her existence. His avoidance of her cut deeply, even though she knew his reasons.

  But something had changed in him. There was an edginess, a vibrating impatience, that sent shivers of alarm and excitement down her spine. "I redecorated the flat over the salon."

  "That was different. You weren't pregnant then."

  "So, you don't mind me redecorating as long as someone else does the heavy work?"

  He was silent for a beat, then, "Someone else does all the work."

  Her knees actually went shaky with relief. She sensed that this house was important to him, despite his determination to sell it. In the short time she'd lived there, she'd become increasingly attached to the house herself. It had an air of gentle waiting, a subtle sadness to the empty rooms, as if they longed to be filled with the sounds of family and children. She couldn't have borne it if he hadn't agreed to let her redecorate, and she'd been prepared to do battle for the right to do so. "You don't mind?"

  He opened the study door as if he couldn't wait to be rid of her frustrating presence. "It's just a house. And when it's sold, it will be someone else's house."

  "Fine," she snapped, fury building in her at his stubborn indifference and overriding any sense of alarm that she might be pushing him too hard. "I'll arrange for one of the local firms to do the work."

  "Rachel," he said softly, as she was on the verge of leaving, "you will not pay for any of the work on the house, or any of the materials."

  Guilt sent colour spreading across her cheeks. She didn't want Cullen to pay for something he so patently didn't want. It made her feel indulged, humoured. It made her feel sneaky. "I'm the one who requires the change, therefore I will pay."

  "No."

  She closed her eyes at his stubbornness. "I want to pay. I can afford to pay."

  "I have money set aside for the house. It should be more than enough for your needs. I'll make it available to you."

  When Rachel opened her eyes she found that his gaze had drifted to her mouth. A small, tingling jolt of surprise went through her. "What about your needs, Cullen?"

  His gaze snapped back to hers, and she told herself she'd imagined the faint mellowing. He looked about as mellow as a hungry tiger.

  "My needs are not at issue here."

  "One day," she said, enunciating each word with a careful precision, "I am going to get very tired of hearing about whose needs are important and whose aren't. And when that happens, I will probably break something. Over your head."

  For the briefest moment his slitted eyes flared to hot metal. A split second later the door was closed in her face.

  Rachel stared at the rich wood grain in disbelief. She was furious and utterly
frustrated, but she knew she'd already pushed him far enough. She went in search of the telephone book and found the listings for painters and decorators, as well as gardening and landscape contractors. If Cullen thought that giving her carte blanche to do what she liked with this place would negate any need for his involvement, then so be it. But he was going to have to be prepared for some changes. Some big changes.

  * * *

  A week later, Cullen rode in just as the last light was fading, to find a minidigger parked in his front yard and the evidence of its earthmoving capability scraped into mounds at regular intervals. There was a van parked nearby, with a man who looked suspiciously like Charley Williams unloading pails of paint from the back of it. Cullen bedded Mac down for the night and then went looking for Rachel. He checked in the lounge. At first glance it was empty. Rachel's warm overstuffed furniture had already altered this room, and with the jumbled disarray of magazines and samples, a swathe of rich terra-cotta-coloured fabric—which he assumed was curtaining—lying over one sofa, the room was transformed even without any alteration to its walls.

  A tightening pain squeezed at his chest. For the first time in Cullen's memory, the house had taken on life. But the warmth and cosiness only emphasised his own aloneness, reminding him of everything he'd never had. And never could have.

  A rippling movement caught his eye, and Cullen realised that Rachel was in the room. She was halfway up a stepladder and almost completely obscured by the heavy terra-cotta drape she was hooking onto a runner. He drew in a breath as she reached to attach another portion of drape, wobbled and muttered before regaining her balance. He was across the room before she could make another attempt.

  Rachel had finally managed to relocate the slippery little hook she'd just dropped when the fabric was whipped out of her hands. She wobbled at the abrupt movement, nearly toppling straight into Cullen's irritable glare. Guilty colour flushed her cheeks. She'd promised Cullen she wouldn't climb any ladders or do any heavy lifting. Not that she considered two steps on a tiny stepladder climbing…