Tempestuous/Restless Heart

by Tami Hoag

  “Didn’t mean to startle you there, sweetheart,” Tully Haskell said with a rather unconvincing gleam in his cold little eyes. He rolled a fat, inch-long stub of a cigar between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Mr. Haskell,” Alex said, automatically putting up the shield of cool control. She righted the bucket and set it aside. The dun mare stood at attention, but didn’t show any signs of coming unglued. A good attitude to adopt, Alex decided. “What brings you out this way so early in the morning?”

  “Does a man need an excuse to call on a pretty gal these days?”

  Alex bit back the retort that was burning on her tongue. It seemed enough punishment for Tully that she did not respond to his sexist remark with a becoming blush and batting eyelashes. He frowned briefly, then ducked under the cross tie, coming close enough to make Alex want to step back.

  “I’m out this way to check on a project. My company is building a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar house on Valley Road, and I don’t trust the lazy bastards on the crew to get it right.” He jammed his cigar stub between his teeth, but it had gone out and acted only as an ugly accessory to his fleshy face. “You gotta stay on top of employees.”

  Gritting her teeth, Alex moved past him to unhook the horse from the cross ties. “I hope you don’t mind if I work while we talk. I have to leave in a few minutes.”

  “You’re working too hard for such a little gal. Ought to have a man around here, don’t you think?”

  She muttered a few words in Italian as she put the mare back in her stall.

  “How’s that?”

  “Nothing,” she answered, fairly certain he wouldn’t want to hear that she thought his brain resided in a much lower region of his body than his head.

  “Anyhow,” Tully went on, never terribly concerned with what anyone else was thinking, “I just swung in to check with you about next weekend. You’re taking the horses to Front Royal?”

  “Yes. I’ll be leaving early Saturday morning.”

  “And you’re staying in what motel?”

  “I’m… staying with an old girlfriend,” she lied smoothly, her deep-seated sense of caution asserting itself. She let herself out of the stall and leaned against the door, staring in at the unremarkable mare because she didn’t want to look at Tully. She disliked him intensely and wasn’t all that sure of her ability to keep it out of her expression.

  “Hmmm,” Tully mused. “Well, fine.” He planted a big hand on her shoulder and shot her a wink and a grin that was meant to bring a teasing quality to his next words. “I’ll be there to give you a kiss in the winner’s circle.”

  Alex barely suppressed the urge to gag at the thought. She gave him a pained smile and shot the bolt home in the mare’s stall with unnecessary force. “I’ll see you in Front Royal then, Mr. Haskell.”

  “You can count on that,” Tully said.

  As he moved away from her he let his hand trail down her back. Alex jumped a bit, sure she felt him pinch her bottom, but when she wheeled to glare accusingly at him, he was sauntering away without giving her a backward glance.

  Swearing liberally, she snatched up the empty bucket and stormed into the tack room, banging it against the wall as she went in an effort to blow off some of her steam. She cursed herself out of habit and Tully out of simple dislike. Why had she attracted the likes of him? Why couldn’t a dotty little old lady own A Touch of Dutch? She’d never been tempted to slap a little old lady. She’d never been nervous around little old ladies either.

  And I won’t be nervous around Haskell, she told herself, relaxing with an effort. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She hadn’t encouraged his advances. He wasn’t likely to take them beyond the harmless flirtation stage.

  Something scuffed the floor behind her, and she whirled with her heart in her throat, eyes wide, adrenaline pumping, instincts on red alert, only to find the source of her panic was the scruffy old barn cat. The bedraggled gray feline looked up at her, a freshly caught mouse drooping from its jaws. Then it turned and ran away, leaving Alex to lean weakly against the saddle rack, trying to put the memory that had shaken loose back into its sealed black box in her mind.

  Christian steered his silver Mercedes carefully off the road and up the pitted, rutted stretch of gravel Alex called a driveway. Once in the farmyard he parked near the barn, briefly contemplating ramming Charlie Simmonds’s red-and-white motorbike where it leaned against the weathered side of the building. The only thing that saved him from doing it was the respect he had for his own vehicle and the distaste he had for facing Marcel, the Frenchman who serviced the machine at a specialty garage in Alexandria.

  Charlie Simmonds was a blight on his life. He cursed the day her parents had met. It was because of Charlie he was feeling so guilty.

  “Ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she’d said, screwing her face into a scowl that made her little eyes all but disappear. “Working herself to a limp frazzle, poor little miss. And for what? So you can lay around on your ruddy bum and watch. Selfish, selfish. That’s you all over. What a bloody crying shame it is. Better than the likes of you, that’s what she deserves, all right, poor little miss.”

  Even now he growled at the thought of the dressing-down Charlie had given him the night before. She’d ridden up to the farm on her motorbike after evening chores for the sole purpose of giving him a tongue-lashing.

  As a result he hadn’t slept a wink and had instead spent the entire night berating himself for being a devious, selfish, uncaring cad. These were not welcome feelings, but he couldn’t shake them. He couldn’t even find any comfort in the knowledge that he had never denied being selfish, that what Charlie called devious tendencies he considered clever thinking, that by uncaring she meant self-absorbed, which he had never denied either. He was a confirmed bachelor, for heaven’s sake! Those were all perfectly ordinary traits for a confirmed bachelor.

  Grumbling under his breath, he climbed out of his sports car already dressed for riding in black breeches and a khaki polo shirt. His ankle was still sore, but it was nothing he hadn’t endured before. He merely ignored it as best he could as he walked into the poorly lit barn, limping slightly.

  It wasn’t entirely his fault Alex was overworked, he told himself for the millionth time. He’d sent her a groom, hadn’t he? For all her cheek Charlie was a good worker. There was no reason Alex couldn’t have been making better use of her, no reason Alex should have to get up an hour early to do tasks Charlie could easily handle.

  Stubborn, that’s what she was. Bloody stubborn. And a damned attractive trait it was. He ground his teeth at the thought. Where were these ludicrous ideas coming from? Full breasts were an attractive trait, not pigheadedness.

  He turned in at the open tack-room door, alarm spurring his pulse into overdrive. Alex was bent over a saddle rack, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her skin as pale as porcelain. He was across the small room in one stride.

  “Alex!” He grabbed her upper arms, fearing she was ill or in pain. Certainly she looked weak.

  Her eyes flew open, and the stark terror he saw there was like an electric jolt to his heart. In a purely instinctive reaction, she jerked back with enough force to pull him into the opposite side of the saddle rack.

  “Alex, it’s me!” he said, not realizing his fingers were biting into her flesh. He’d never had a woman look at him with such pure horror. It was a terrible feeling. “For God’s sake, calm down!”

  She stared at him for a tense moment as if she had no idea who he was. Then everything started to click into place. The fear left her eyes—but the general wariness didn’t. Her body relaxed visibly, her shoulders sagging. She started breathing again, slowly and regularly.

  “Christian,” she said evenly. “You startled me.”

  “Startled you?” he said, incredulous, still shaken to the core. “Frightened to death is more like it. What’s the matter? I came in and saw you bent over this saddle….”

  She looked down at the smooth dark leather, feeli
ng she’d made a disastrous slip. He’d seen her with her guard completely down. It made her feel too vulnerable.

  “Alex?”

  “Nothing. I had a cramp, that’s all.”

  She fully expected him to drop the topic. No man of her acquaintance had ever wanted to hear any of the gory details of a woman’s life. It was a topic guaranteed to scare them off. But then, most men weren’t Christian Atherton.

  “You’re lying,” he said flatly, too upset to be polite. “Good Lord, Alexandra, you reacted as if you thought I was going to attack you!”

  Instantly she dodged his gaze, glancing toward the open door, unwittingly answering a question that was only half-formed in his mind. The sudden knowledge was a worse shock than her response had been.

  “Oh, my…” His voice trailed off, and his hands fell away from her as a nauseating weakness spread through him. Leaning back against the saddle rack behind him, he ran a hand back through his hair. He thought of every time she’d shied away from him, of the way she’d thrown him that first day when he’d startled her from behind. Finally it all made sense. Terrible sense.

  Alex pressed back against the rough wood wall, wishing with all her heart she could melt right through it. The instant Christian had realized the truth, he had taken his hands off her, as if she were unclean, as if he hoped it wasn’t too late to save himself from being tainted. But that was exactly what she had expected.

  “Alex,” he murmured, lifting his gaze to hers, anguish plain in the fathomless blue depths. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  What happened now? she wondered. Did they just say their good-byes and go their separate ways? Why hadn’t he just stayed away from the beginning? They would have both been spared the embarrassment of this moment.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Christian asked gently. She looked so alone, so uncomfortable, as if she would have crawled right out of her skin had that been an option. Her shoulders were squared, tensed, pressed back against the wall, her hands splayed against the rough pine boards. She looked like someone expecting a firing squad and no blindfold.

  Alex supposed she could have escaped. She doubted Christian would come after her. But she was tired of running. It wasn’t in her nature. Stand and fight had always been her motto. She had stood her ground and fought before and come away battered and bloody, disillusioned by everyone and everything she had ever believed in. The choice now was simple in her eyes. She had nothing left to lose.

  “My last name was DeGrazia then,” she began.

  “Alexandra DeGrazia,” Christian murmured, the puzzle piece falling into place. “I saw you ride in California.” He stared down at the saddle in front of him as if he could see the whole scene on it. “A three-day event outside of Napa. I was there looking at a mare who showed promise in the show ring but not cross-country.”

  “My husband Michael and I were riding for Wide Acre Farm, the Reidells,” she prompted.

  “Yes,” he said, but there was no further dawning of understanding.

  He didn’t know. How ironic, Alex thought, almost tempted to laugh. She had been so sure her married name would evoke gasps and looks of self-righteous reproach from everyone who heard it. Because she had been the one at the center of the storm, she had been certain every third person in the free world had known about the trial.

  Somehow it would have been easier if Christian had known. He would have absorbed the details from the media and formed the same opinion everyone else had—that she was a liar. Now she would have the chance to tell her side once again. But no one else had ever believed her, so why would she think Christian might? Christian Atherton, of all people. A deep depression settled in her heart at the thought that he would leave her life now.

  She sighed, conceding defeat, then told her tale in the flat, emotionless tone of a victim who has somehow managed to distance herself from the incident after being forced to relive it again and again.

  “We had been working at Wide Acre about six months. It was going well. We got along well enough with Mr. Reidell. His son Greg was about our age, a little younger. I guess he was twenty-two or twenty-three, and I was twenty-five. We were friends—Greg and Michael, Greg and I. At least, I thought he was my friend. He was always making… remarks to me. Personal remarks. I thought he was teasing. I always gave him a sassy answer. One evening when Michael was gone, Greg came to our apartment and told me it was time I made good on all that talk. He raped me.”

  Christian felt the words like a physical blow. He hurt for Alex, for what she had been through. To force a woman was unthinkable to him, an intolerable act of violence. And the knowledge that Greg Reidell was handsome and educated and well-off made it all the more despicable.

  “I pressed charges,” Alex went on, condensing what had seemed an unending nightmare to the barest of facts. “But I didn’t have any real proof. It was his word against mine, his family’s money and power against a little nobody. He claimed I had been having an affair with him for months, that I liked it a little rough, which discounted the doctor’s testimony. He claimed he told me he was going to break it off, and that I was just trying to get back at him, humiliate him, that I was angling for a big chunk of hush money since I couldn’t sleep my way into the family. Of course, he was too virtuous to pay for something he hadn’t done, so he let the case come to trial to reveal me for the lying, conniving slut I was.”

  “The bastard,” Christian muttered, his voice trembling with fury. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and for the first time in his life he knew what it was to want to kill another human being. “The bloody bastard.”

  Alex looked up at him with a strange, bemused expression. “You believe me?” she said incredulously.

  Christian’s brows pulled together, and he frowned at her. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

  “Because no one else did,” she said simply.

  “You mean, no one outside your family.”

  “I mean no one.”

  Her family had offered minimal token support. They had taken her in after her marriage had crumbled, but they hadn’t been doing her a favor. It had been an obligation. The Gianni men had been inclined to loyalty toward their gender. The Gianni women had been full of reproach about the way she flirted, the way she dressed, the profession she pursued. All of them had been vaguely ashamed. None of them had believed Greg Reidell would have forced a woman. He was too handsome, too wealthy. He didn’t fit their idea of a rapist, and they weren’t inclined to change their preconceived ideas—because then their neatly ordered world would be in danger of tilting on its axis. If a man like Greg Reidell could be capable of rape, then who were they supposed to trust, what were they supposed to believe in?

  Their subtle betrayal hadn’t made her angry. Just sad. It had made her see them as ordinary, flawed humans. The idyllic family of her memories had ceased to exist.

  “Surely, your husband…” Christian said, looking helpless.

  Alex smiled sadly. “Michael tried, but he felt betrayed and he felt guilty, and in the end he just couldn’t deal with it. He was always the jealous type. Reidell’s lies played on that, preyed on his mind.”

  She sighed and combed a hand back through her bangs. “I was pregnant with Isabella when it happened. Just a month or so along. I hadn’t told Michael yet. I was waiting for the right time,” she said with an ironic twist to her mouth. “When I did tell him, he wouldn’t believe me when I said the baby couldn’t be Greg’s. I think that was what ultimately ended the marriage. He couldn’t bear the thought of raising another man’s child.”

  As her words trailed off into the silence of the tack room, Alex let the last of the tension drain from her muscles. She was so tired, tired of running from who she was, tired of the fear of ridicule, of the speculative looks. She wished Christian would just leave so she could curl up in a corner and shut the world out with sleep.

  Christian studied her quietly. He remembered again the laughing, lovel
y girl he’d seen in California, so full of spirit and youthful innocence, and he mourned her loss. Now he took in the cropped hair, the drab, baggy sweatshirt, the world-weary eyes, and the dark shadows beneath them—the disguise of a woman haunted by her past. And everything inside him ached for her. She’d been so alone. She’d been doubted by the people she had needed most. Now he understood her obsessive self-reliance. Now he understood a lot of things.

  Protectiveness, possessiveness, sifted through him. He was so absolutely focused on Alex, though, that he didn’t try to escape them this time. For perhaps the first time in his life his own needs had become secondary.

  “I’d take it all away if I could,” he whispered, stepping forward and gathering her in his arms. He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her temple.

  Alex pressed her cheek to his chest, stunned for an instant. She had become so used to the rejection, the doubts. But there were no doubts from Christian. He was holding her the way she had longed to be held, giving her the human contact she had been denied. The people she had loved had treated her like a leper, and this man she barely knew was holding her and sharing her pain and offering his comfort.

  For the first time in forever she allowed the tears to fall. They streamed down her cheeks and soaked into the soft cotton of Christian’s knit shirt. All the hurt and the loneliness poured out, leaving her empty and exhausted.

  When the river of tears had finally ceased to flow, Christian gallantly handed her a handkerchief dug out of the small zippered pocket of his breeches. Then he bent and swept her up into his arms and started for the door.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked, her voice hoarse from crying. She swiped at the moisture still clinging to her lashes and let out a little yelp as Christian hefted her slight weight in his arms, resettling her. “Put me down,” she demanded weakly even as her arms slid willingly around his neck.

  “I’m taking you to the house,” he said firmly. His expression brooked no disobedience. “You’re taking the day off to rest. Look the word up in the dictionary if you need to.”