by Janet Dailey
It was Marissa who finally broke Angie’s semi-paralysis by shouldering past her to enter the room. “My God, Deke, are you all right?” Her alarmed question was followed instantly by another as his sister sent a disbelieving look around the room. “What happened here?”
Her voice was slow to create a reaction from her brother, but when it did, Deke came to his feet like a raging bull. His sudden fury took them both by surprise, shocking them into stillness.
“Get out of here!” Deke roared, a wounded, snarling animal with his teeth bared and his features contorted with the rage of agony.
The instant his blazing gray eyes saw Angie standing near the door, his expression changed to that of a demented man, haunted by hallucinations. He stared, clinging to the mirage before him. Raw emotion burned in his eyes while the wetness of tears brought a sheen to his high cheekbones. Angie was gripped by the sight of him, her heart squeezed until it matched the pain she saw. She took a step toward him, and the movement seemed to break the spell of illusion that had paralyzed him. She was real, not a spectre come to haunt him.
“Deke, are you all right?” Angie murmured anxiously.
It seemed to take great effort and will for him to tear his gaze from her. Its downward focus finally centered on the article clenched in his hand. His fist tightened on it.
“I suppose this is what you came for.” When he spoke, his voice seemed to come from some deep pit. “It was overlooked in the packing.” With a suddenly violent emotion, Deke hurled it at Angie. “Take it and go.”
Through sheer reflex, she caught it while her stunned gaze watched him stride to the glass doors that opened onto the private balcony. She looked down at the cloth in her hands and recognized the blue silk of her favorite blouse. It had been in the laundry—laundry that was now scattered over the floor, the clothes hamper overturned and partially smashed. Marissa must have missed it when she packed her things. Angie’s confusion mounted. Why had Deke been clutching it? What did it mean? Her questioning gaze ran back to his broad-shouldered figure, his back turned to her as he faced the balcony. She glanced at Marissa whose concern for her brother was more deeply etched in her face. But his sister offered no answers to her questions.
“Deke—” Angie tried again to appeal to him for an explanation.
“Get out of here!” He cast a snarling look over his shoulder. “Both of you!”
Angie recoiled from the savagery in his loud voice and twisted features. If he had physically slapped her, Deke couldn’t have made it plainer that she wasn’t wanted here. Trembling, she looked at the blouse in her hands. She blessed the dryness of her eyes, incapable of shedding any more tears. She made a move to leave, but the touch of Marissa’s hand on her arm stayed her.
“Please talk to him, Angie,” Marissa appealed to her again and glanced at her brother, then bowed her head. “I’ll wait for you in the other room,” she murmured, then lifted her teary gaze. “He’ll listen to you. I know he will. Please.”
After Marissa had quietly exited the room and closed the door to give them privacy, Angie looked at the solid wall of Deke’s back and wasn’t so sure. There was more than the width of the room separating them, but it was the easiest to cross, regardless of the obstacle course of broken furniture and scattered laundry.
Deke seemed oblivious to her presence—a statue carved out of teakwood, set facing the glass doors. The rough masculine features of his profile were etched in sharp relief, tanned skin stretched across hard sinew and bone.
“Deke, what is it?” Angie didn’t understand.
“Will you go away?” His voice was hard and taut as he refused to look at her. “Just go away.” She could see the muscles working in his jaw, controlling whatever emotion that was churning inside.
“Will you please tell me what it is?” Angie repeated her question, trying desperately to reach him—to persuade him to release the thing he was holding inside.
When Deke turned his head to look at her, she was close enough to see that his eyes looked bloodshot and raw. It was a frightening sight of a man half-crazed with pain. She wanted to cry for him as if her tears could soothe his reddened eyes.
“Why are you here? Why did you come?” His questions were forced through his tightly clenched jaw.
His fiercely pained gaze scanned her face, looking for something. Was it blame as his sister had suggested? But she didn’t hold him responsible for the miscarriage. Surely he could see that.
“Marissa asked me to come,” she admitted frankly. “She thought it might help if I talked to you.”
His face went cold and he turned away. “She wasted your time. We have nothing left to talk about.” His voice was brutally harsh, leaving her in no doubt that he was through with her. “You wanted permission to see Lindy—you’ve got it. You wanted independence—you’re free. You didn’t want to remain here—so leave. What is left to discuss?”
“You,” Angie replied with quiet intensity. “And what you’re doing to yourself!”
“Surely that’s my business!” Deke snapped.
“Marissa said you haven’t been to the ranch for days,’ she accused.
“It’ll survive without me.” He continued to stare out the window, tight-lipped and coldly contained.
“For how long?” Angie challenged him softly.
“What do you care?” Deke blazed suddenly, showing how tenuous his control was, and launched himself away from the window—and Angie. His long strides carried him to the center of the room and no farther. A rigid tension held him motionless.
“What about the people who depend on you?” she reasoned. “Marissa, Lindy and the men on the ranch who work for you.”
She approached him slowly with caution. The impression was strong that he was a wounded animal, capable of turning on her, not caring that she only wanted to help.
“They can look after themselves,” Deke replied grimly.
“Lindy, too?” she murmured.
“Lindy’s got you.” The thickness of thinning patience was heavy in his voice. “Will you get out of here?!”
He wasn’t listening to her. He was shutting her out. What had she expected? She had been wrong to listen to Marissa. Angie looked around the room, seeing again the destruction so similar to the rest of the house.
“What happened here, Deke?” She voiced her confusion. “Who did this?”
“Who the hell do you think?” He turned on her, his rage barely controlled. “I did!” Deke paused, straining for words and control. He turned away and expelled a weary, frustrated breath. “Please go.”
She had suspected he’d done it, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it until she’d heard him say it. But she still didn’t understand.
“Why, Deke?” Her head moved from side to side as she groped helplessly for a reason. “Why?”
“Why the hell do you think?” The response was dragged from him. “Because I couldn’t stand to look at it any more and remember.” His gaze swung to her, some kind of hunger in their scanning look. “I can’t even stand to be around my own daughter,” he declared hoarsely. “Every time I look at her, I see you. And it just tears me apart all over again.”
She searched his face for an incredulous second, certain that she was misunderstanding. “What are you saying?” Angie breathed.
“I let you go out of my life once, Angie, and survived,” Deke murmured thickly. “But I don’t think I can make it a second time.” There was a dejected shake of his head. “I tried. I really thought I could do it.”
“Marissa thought... I thought you were blaming yourself because I lost the baby,” Angie whispered, but he seemed to be saying that wasn’t the cause for his erratic behavior at all.
“That was my fault.” Deke turned from her, hanging his head. Pain was creased into the drawn, white features of his profile. Angie was shaken by the sensation she was looking at a broken man.
“I fell, Deke. It was an accident,” she insisted.
“You fell because you were run
ning from me,” he corrected and lifted his hands to look at them, palms upward, fingers spread. There was strength in their calloused dimensions. “I might as well have pushed you down those stairs with these two hands.”
“That isn’t true,” Angie protested, but nothing she said seemed to mean anything to him.
“It is.” His eyes were tightly closed as he forced the assertion through gritted teeth. “I drove you away from me and killed our baby at the same time.”
“Deke, stop it.” She was trembling, racked by the pain and guilt that was twisting inside him. “Stop torturing yourself with this.”
When her hand touched his arm in an attempt to turn him around so she could see his face, Deke reacted with the same violence she’d seen in him earlier. He swung around, severing the contact with a wild shrug of his arm.
“Don’t do that!” Deke thundered in a raw frenzy. Angie recoiled from him, and his rage dissipated in a shudder. “For God’s sake, don’t touch me. Have some pity.”
He was so vulnerable, so easily hurt that she wanted to cry for him. “I do,” Angie murmured with an ache in her voice for him.
“Go away,” he groaned. “Can’t you see it’s worse with you here?”
“No, I’m not leaving—not yet,” Angie insisted, but she couldn’t leave him in this state. “Not until you realize that you weren’t responsible for my accident. You’re feeling guilty because you didn’t want the baby, not because we lost it.”
“Not want the baby?!” There was an incredulous ring in his hoarse voice. “How could I not want it? It was yours and mine!”
“But—” Confusion darkened her eyes as Angie raked a hand through her hair. “—you were angry when I told you I was pregnant.”
“Yes, I was angry,” Deke admitted huskily, desperation clawing through his voice and expression. “It was all happening again. I’d gotten you pregnant with a baby you didn’t want.”
“But I wanted it.” She breathed out the words, stunned by his explanation.
“Don’t say that.” He turned his head from her. “Don’t make it worse than it is.”
“Deke, I wanted the baby,” Angie insisted, refusing to pretend otherwise. “The same as I wanted Lindy when I was pregnant with her. But I thought you didn’t.”
“In God’s name, why would you think such a thing?” His gray eyes were nearly black with hurt from her accusation.
This time, she was the one who looked away. “Deke, please don’t try to convince me that you would have asked me to marry you if I hadn’t told you I was pregnant. I’ll never believe it.” She felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
“I wouldn’t have asked you that night,” he admitted. “Maybe it would have been months before I realized that I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. I just knew I had to keep you here—any way I could.”
Her gaze ran back to him, wary of false hope. Yet, there seemed to be something more than just desire in his hungry look. Angie could almost see the light glimmering at the end of her long, lonely tunnel.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because I can’t make it without you.” He looked extremely tired, defeated. “I don’t even have the strength to try this time.”
He had said almost the same thing earlier, only she hadn’t been ready to believe him. Now, she was slowly accepting that he meant it. He wasn’t just saying it to assauge any guilt for the accident.
“The night of the accident, I was running away from you because I didn’t want you to marry me out of a sense of responsibility,” Angie told him.
“I was responsible for you being pregnant,” Deke reminded her tersely.
“So was I,” she asserted. “I’m not a naive teenager anymore, so I can’t pretend an ignorance of the precautions to avoid becoming pregnant. I was equally responsible for my condition.”
“What does it matter now?” he argued wearily. “I still caused you to lose the child. You’ve admitted you were running from me.”
“Yes. I debated whether I should even tell you I was pregnant,” Angie admitted. “I considered seriously taking advantage of the fact you were gone and leaving before you found out. In the end, I realized I had to tell you. I hoped. . . you might be happy about it, because it could have meant we had a chance together. Instead, you were angry.”
“Not about the baby.” Deke was frowning, his gaze narrowed in its haunted study of her. “It was your face when you told me—the way you looked at me—” He stopped, not finishing the sentence.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured in bewilderment.
“Remember the time when you asked me how much more I expected you to give—that I’d taken your pride and self-respect by installing you in this house as my mistress?” His mouth thinned into a line of self-disgust.
“I remember,” Angie nodded faintly.
“I replied that I wanted you to give yourself,” Deke reminded her. “I wanted revenge for the hell I went through when you left me the last time. I was determined that you were going to suffer the same agony that I did.”
She was stunned by his confession that his cruelty had been deliberate, then skillfully disguised it. “You never had any intention of letting me see Lindy. It was all a lie when you claimed we needed to get to know each other before you would give your consent to that.”
“It was all a lie.” His stark, powerful features were riddled with contempt for his perfidy.
Never once had Angie suspected the extent of his deceit and premeditation. She had always given him the benefit of a doubt, convinced he was only testing the sincerity of her motives. She was staggered by how wrong she’d been.
“How could you?” Angie whispered brokenly. “You let me think—”
“I know.” His broad chest heaved with a deep breath. The gauntness around his face and eyes became more pronounced. “If I destroyed you, I guess I thought it would crush the need I had for you. Only it didn’t work.”
“It’s all been a lie.” Her gaze swung away from him and stopped on the mattress, tilted on its broken frame. “All those nights we slept together in this bed, you were just—”
“—trying to get you out of my system,” Deke finished the sentence before she could reach a different conclusion. “I didn’t think there was anything left of what I’d felt for you . . . until you showed up here again. When I realized you could still arouse my lust, I hated myself for not having the strength to resist you. Everytime I was near you, I wanted you—day or night.”
“So you brought me here—where I could be at your disposal.” Angie felt cheap and used, more so than she had before, because there weren’t any more doubts about his attitude toward her.
“I tried to pretend that my needs were only sexual—except that—it was always more than sex with us,” he stated. “I found myself wanting to spend all my time here—with you. I wanted your company, not just in bed, but at the dinner table, behind the counter in the mornings fixing my breakfast, by my side walking along the beach—all the time, in any situation. I resented that, too.”
She listened to him, trying to believe that he meant it, because that’s the way it had been for her, too. If he was lying now, she wanted to die.
“You have every reason to hate me,” he declared in a resigned voice.
“It hurts.” Her throat ached with the words.
“When you fell down those steps, I saw what I’d done to you—to us. I knew you couldn’t forgive me, not after the way I treated you.” Pain flashed through his expression. “I killed the chance you could ever care for me, the same way I killed our baby.”
“It wasn’t your fault I lost the baby,” Angie insisted again.
But Deke wasn’t listening. “I tried to make it up to you. That’s why I gave you permission to see Lindy any time you wanted. It was wrong to keep holding onto you when you wanted your freedom. I tried to give you everything you wanted.”
“Not everything.” She shook her head to indicate his failure. “I wanted your love
, Deke. It would have made up for everything.”
Doubt clouded his eyes. “You’ve always had my love. I never stopped loving you—not even during all those years we were apart.”
“I didn’t think you loved me when we were married,” Angie remembered. “You didn’t act like you did.”
“How could I?” he frowned. “You wouldn’t share that single bed with me at your uncle’s house. I couldn’t find an apartment that pleased you. You gave me no indication that you wanted my kisses. What was I supposed to do?” he demanded. “Assert my conjugal rights? Raping my pregnant wife?”
“I didn’t think you loved me then. And when you announced we were getting married because I was pregnant again, I ran away to escape another forced marriage without love,” she explained. “I was afraid you’d be able to convince me it would work out.”
Deke took an involuntary step toward her. “Could I have convinced you, Angie?” He searched her face.
Her laugh was a breathless sound, dry and without humor. “Too easily,” she admitted. “Oh, don’t you see?” Her chin quivered with emotion. “I had finally stopped kidding myself that I was only staying here because of Lindy. It might have started out, partially, that way, but I stayed because I was in love with you.”
For a split second, Deke didn’t move. Then he gathered her roughly into his arms and buried his face against the side of her neck. She clung to him, pressing herself to his length. Warm tears slipped from her lashes to run down her cheeks, but they were tears of joy, multiplying with love returned in equal measure.
“Don’t leave me, Angle,” Deke muttered thickly against her skin. “I’ll go crazy without you.’
“I’ll never leave you,” she promised and tried to absorb the shudders that trembled through him. “Not ever again.”
With a stifled moan, his mouth covered her lips, kissing her deeply and hungrily. A golden fire of emotion flamed them together. His hands moved restlessly over her flesh, shaping her curves to his male body and sending stimulating signals through her bones. Angie quivered with the sweet intensity of belonging to him, shaken by the rough insistence of his exploring hands.