by Diana Palmer
“This is your home,” Corrigan persisted quietly. “You were born and raised in Jacobsville. Surely having a good job here would be preferable to being a stenographer in New York. Unless,” he added slowly, “there’s some reason you want to stay there.”
His eyes were flashing. Dorie looked into the film on her cooling hot chocolate. “I don’t have anyone in New York.” She shifted her legs. “I don’t have anyone here, either, now.”
“But you do,” Abby protested. “All your friends.”
“Of course, she may miss the bright lights and excitement,” Corrigan drawled.
She looked at him curiously. He was trying to goad her. Why?
“Is Jacobsville too small for you now, city girl?” he persisted with a mocking smile.
“No, it isn’t that at all,” she said. She cleared her throat.
“Come home,” Abby coaxed.
She didn’t answer.
“Still afraid of me?” Corrigan asked with a harsh laugh when her head jerked up. “That’s why you left. Is it why you won’t come back?”
She colored furiously, the first trace of color that had shown in her face since the strange conversation began.
“I’m not...afraid of you!” she faltered.
But she was, and he knew it. His silver eyes narrowed and that familiar, mocking smile turned up his thin upper lip. “Prove it.”
“Maybe Miss Marston doesn’t want a bookkeeper.”
“She does,” he returned.
She hesitated. “She might not like me.”
“She will.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t make a decision that important in a few seconds,” she told him. “I have to think about it.”
“Take your time,” he replied. “Nobody’s rushing you.”
“It would be lovely if you came back, though,” Abby said with a smile. “No matter how many friends we have, we can always use one more.”
“Exactly,” Corrigan told her. His eyes narrowed. “Of course, you needn’t consider me in your decision. I’m not trying to get you to come back for my sake. But I’m sure there are plenty of other bachelors left around here who’d be delighted to give you a whirl, if you needed an incentive.”
His lean face was so hard and closed that not one flicker of emotion got away from it.
Abby was eyeing him curiously, but she didn’t say a word, not even when her gaze fell to his hand on the silver knob of the cane and saw it go white from the pressure.
He eased up on the handle, just the same. “Well?”
“I’d like to,” Dorie said quietly. She didn’t look at him. Odd, how his statement had hurt, after all those years. She looked back on the past with desperation these days, wondering how her life would have been if she hadn’t resisted him that night he’d tried to carry her to bed.
She hadn’t wanted an affair, but he was an honorable man, in his fashion. Perhaps he would have followed up with a proposal, despite his obvious distaste for the married state. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. There might have been a child...
She grimaced and lifted the cup of chocolate to her lips. It was tepid and vaguely distasteful.
“Go see Clarisse, why don’t you?” he added. “You’ve nothing to lose, and a lot to gain. She’s a sweet woman. You’ll like her.”
Did he? She didn’t dare wonder about that, or voice her curiosity. “I might do that,” she replied.
The tap of the cane seemed unusually loud as he turned back to the door. “Give the brothers my best,” Corrigan told Abby. He nodded and was gone.
Only then did Dorie look up, her eyes on his tall, muscular body as he walked carefully back to the big double-cabbed black ranch pickup truck he drove.
“What happened to him?” Dorie asked.
Abby sipped her own hot chocolate before she answered. “It happened the week after you left town. He went on a hunting trip in Montana with some other men. During a heavy, late-spring snow, Corrigan and another man went off on their own in a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle to scout another section of the hunting range.”
“And?” Dorie prompted.
“The truck went over a steep incline and overturned. The other man was killed outright. Corrigan was pinned and couldn’t get free. He lay there most of the night and into the next day before the party came looking for them and found him. By that time, he was unconscious. The impact broke his leg in two places, and he had frostbite, as well. He almost died.”
Dorie caught her breath. “How horrible!”
“They wanted to amputate the leg, but...” she shrugged. “He refused them permission to operate, so they did the best they could. The leg is usable, just, but it will always be stiff. They said later that it was a miracle he didn’t lose any toes. He had just enough sense left to wrap himself in one of those thin thermal sheets the men had carried on the trip. It saved him from a dangerous frostbite.”
“Poor man.”
“Oh, don’t make that mistake,” Abby mused. “Nobody is allowed to pity Corrigan Hart. Just ask his brothers.”
“All the same, he never seemed the sort of man to lose control of anything, not even a truck.”
“He wasn’t himself but he didn’t lose control, either.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Abby grimaced. “He and the other man, the one who was driving, had been drinking. He blamed himself not only for the wreck, but for the other man’s death. He knew the man wasn’t fit to drive but he didn’t try to stop him. They say he’s been punishing himself ever since. That’s why he never comes into town, or has any social life. He’s withdrawn into himself and nobody can drag him back out. He’s become a hermit.”
“But, why?”
“Why was he drinking, you mean?” Abby said, and Dorie nodded. Still, Abby hesitated to put it into words.
“Tell me,” came the persistent nudge from Dorie.
Abby’s eyes were apologetic. “Nobody knows, really. But the gossip was that he was trying to get over losing you.”
CHAPTER TWO
“BUT HE WANTED to lose me,” Dorie exclaimed, shocked. “He couldn’t get out of my house fast enough when I refused...refused him,” she blurted. She clasped her hands together. “He accused me of being frigid and a tease...”
“Corrigan was a rounder, Dorie,” Abby said gently. “In this modern age, even in Jacobsville, a lot of girls are pretty sophisticated at eighteen. He wouldn’t have known about your father being a minister, because he’d retired from the church before the Harts came to take over their grandfather’s ranch. He was probably surprised to find you less accommodating than other girls.”
“Surprised wasn’t the word,” Dorie said miserably. “He was furious.”
“He did go to the bus depot when you left.”
“How did you know that?”
“Everybody talked about it,” Abby admitted. “It was generally thought that he went there to stop you.”
“He didn’t say a word,” came the quiet reply. “Not one word.”
“Maybe he didn’t know what to say. He was probably embarrassed and upset about the way he’d treated you. A man like that might not know what to do with an innocent girl.”
Dorie laughed bitterly. “Sure he did. You see her off and hope she won’t come back. He told me that he had no intention of marrying.”
“He could have changed his mind.”
Dorie shook her head. “Not a chance. He never talked about us being a couple. He kept reminding me that I was young and that he liked variety. He said that we shouldn’t think of each other in any serious way, but just enjoy each other while it lasted.”
“That sounds like a Hart, all right,” Abby had to admit. “They’re all like Corrigan. Apparently they have a collective bad attitu
de toward women and think of them as minor amusements.”
“He picked on the wrong girl,” Dorie said. She finished her hot chocolate. “I’d never even had a real boyfriend when he came along. He was so forceful and demanding and inflexible, so devoid of tenderness when he was with me.” She huddled closer into her sweater. “He came at me like a rocket. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide, he just kept coming.” Her eyes closed on a long sigh. “Oh, Abby, he scared me to death. I’d been raised in a such a way that I couldn’t have an affair, and I knew that was all he wanted. I ran, and kept running. Now I can’t stop.”
“You could, if you wanted to.”
“The only way I’d come back is with a written guarantee that he wanted nothing more to do with me,” she said with a cold laugh. “Otherwise, I’d never feel safe here.”
“He just told you himself that he had no designs on you,” Abby reminded her. “He has other interests.”
“Does he? Other...women interests?”
Abby clasped her fingers together on the table. “He goes out with a rich divorcée when he’s in need of company,” she said. “That’s been going on for a long time now. He probably was telling the truth when he said that he wouldn’t bother you. After all, it’s been eight years.” She studied the other woman. “You want to come home, don’t you?”
Caught off guard, Dorie nodded. “I’m so alone,” she confessed. “I have bolts and chains on my door and I live like a prisoner when I’m not at work. I rarely ever go outside. I miss trees and green grass.”
“There’s always Central Park.”
“You can’t plant flowers there,” she said, “or have a dog or cat in a tiny apartment like mine. I want to sit out in the rain and watch the stars at night. I’ve dreamed of coming home.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Because of the way I left,” she confessed. “I didn’t want any more trouble than I’d already had. It was bad enough that Dad had to come and see me, that I couldn’t come home.”
“Because of Corrigan?”
“What?” For an instant, Dorie’s eyes were frightened. Then they seemed to calm. “No, it was for another reason altogether, those first few years. I couldn’t risk coming here, where it’s so easy to find people...” She closed up when she realized what she was saying. “It was a problem I had, in New York. That’s all I can tell you. And it’s over now. There’s no more danger from that direction. I’m safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to know,” Dorie said gently. “It wouldn’t help matters to talk about it now. But I would like to come back home. I seem to have spent most of my life on the run.”
What an odd turn of phrase, Abby thought, but she didn’t question it. She just smiled. “Well, if you decide to come back, I’ll introduce you to Clarisse. Just let me know.”
Dorie brightened. “All right. Let me think about it for a day or two, and I’ll be in touch with you.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.”
* * *
FOR THE NEXT two days, Dorie thought about nothing else except coming back to her hometown. While she thought, she wandered around the small yard, looking at the empty bird feeders and the squirrel feeder nearby. She saw the discarded watering pot, the weed-bound flower beds. Her father’s long absence had made its mark on the little property. It needed a loving hand to restore it.
She stood very still as an idea formed in her mind. She didn’t have to sell the property. She could keep it. She could live here. With her math skills, and the bookkeeping training she’d had in business school, she could open a small bookkeeping service of her own. Clarisse could be a client. She could have others. She could support herself. She could leave New York.
The idea took wing. She was so excited about it that she called Abby the next morning when she was sure that the boys would be in school.
She outlined the idea to her friend. “Well, what do you think?” she asked enthusiastically.
“I think it’s a great idea!” Abby exclaimed. “And the perfect solution. When are you going to start?”
“Next week,” she said with absolute certainty. “I’ll use the Christmas vacation I would have had as my notice. It will only take a couple of days to pack up the few things I have. I’ll have to pay the rent, because I signed a lease, but if things work out as I hope they will, that won’t be a problem. Oh, Abby, it’s like a dream!”
“Now you sound more like the Dorothy I used to know,” Abby told her. “I’m so glad you’re coming home.”
“So am I,” Dorie replied, and even as she said it, she tried not to think of the complications that could arise. Corrigan was still around. But he’d made her a promise of sorts, and perhaps he’d keep it. Anyway, she’d worry about that situation later.
* * *
A WEEK LATER, Dorie was settled into her father’s house, with all her bittersweet memories of him to keep her company. She’d shipped her few big things, like her piano, home by a moving service. Boxes still cluttered the den, but she was beginning to get her house into some sort of order.
It needed a new roof, and some paint, as well as some plumbing work on the leaky bathtub faucet. But those were minor inconveniences. She had a good little nest egg in her savings account and it would tide her over, if she was careful, until she could be self-supporting in her business again.
She had some cards and stationery printed and put an ad in the Jacobsville weekly newspaper. Then she settled in and began to work in the yard, despite the cold weather. She was finding that grief had to be worked through. It didn’t end at the funeral. And the house was a constant reminder of the old days when she and her father had been happy.
So it was a shock to find Corrigan Hart on her doorstep the first Saturday she was in residence.
She just stared at him at first, as if she’d been stunned. In fact, she was. He was the last person she’d have expected to find on her doorstep.
He had a bouquet of flowers in the hand that wasn’t holding the cane and his hat. He proferred them brusquely.
“Housewarming present,” he said.
She took the pretty bouquet and belatedly stood aside. “Would you like to come in? I could make coffee.”
He accepted the invitation, placing his hat on the rack by the door. He kept the cane and she noticed that he leaned on it heavily as he made his way to the nearest easy chair and sat down in it.
“They say damp weather is hard on injured joints,” she remarked.
His pale eyes speared into her face, with an equal mixture of curiosity and irritation. “They’re right,” he drawled. “Walking hurts. Does it help to have me admit it?”
“I wasn’t trying to score points,” she replied quietly. “I didn’t get to say so in the café, but I’m sorry you got hurt.”
His own eyes were pointed on the scar that ran the length of her cheek. “I’m sorry you did,” he said gruffly. “You mentioned coffee?”
There it was again, that bluntness that had frightened her so much at eighteen. Despite the eight years in between, he still intimidated her.
She moved into the small kitchen, visible from the living room, and filled the pot with water and a premeasured coffee packet. After she’d started it dripping, and had laid a tray with cups, saucers and the condiments, she rejoined him.
“Are you settling in?” he asked a minute after she’d dropped down onto the sofa.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s strange, after being away for so many years. And I miss Dad. But I always loved this house. Eventually it will be comforting to live here. Once I get over the worst of the grieving.”
He nodded. “We lost both our parents at once, in a flood,” he said tersely. “I remember how we felt.”
He looked around at the high ceilings and marked walls, and the open fi
replace. He nodded toward it. “That isn’t efficient. You need a stove in here.”
“I need a lot of things in here, but I have to eat, too,” she said with a faint smile. She pushed back her short, wavy platinum hair and curled up on the sofa in her jeans and gray sweatshirt and socks. Her shoes were under the sofa. Even in cold weather, she hated wearing shoes around the house.
He seemed to notice that and found it amusing, judging by the twinkle in his pale eyes.
“I hate shoes,” she said.
“I remember.”
That was surprising. She hardly remembered the girl she’d been eight years ago. It seemed like a lifetime.
“You had a dog, that damned little spaniel, and you were out in the front yard washing him one day when I drove by,” he recalled. “He didn’t like a bath, and you were soaked, bare feet, cutoffs, tank top and all.” His eyes darkened as he looked at her. “I told you to go in the house, do you remember?”
“Yes.” The short command had always puzzled her, because he’d seemed angry, not amused as he did now.
“I never said why,” he continued. His face tautened as he looked at her. “You weren’t wearing anything under that tank top and it was plastered to you,” he added quietly. “You can’t imagine what it did to me... And there was that damned Bobby Harris standing on the sidewalk gawking at you.”
Bobby had asked her out later that day, and she’d refused, because she didn’t like him. He was an older boy; her father never had liked him.
“I didn’t realize,” she said, amazed that the memory should be so tame now, when his odd behavior had actually hurt in the past. She actually flushed at the thought that he’d seen her that way so early in their relationship.
“I know that, now, eight years too late,” he said abruptly.
She cocked her head, studying him curiously.
He saw her gaze and lifted his eyes. “I thought you were displaying your charms brazenly for my benefit, and maybe even for Bobby’s,” he said with a mocking smile. “That’s why I acted the way I did that last night we dated.”
Her face thinned with distress. “Oh, no!”