Diana Palmer - Renegade

It broke the tension. He laughed.

Her face was radiant. “I didn’t know if I could be with a man, even a few days ago,” she confessed huskily. “But I’m almost sure I could be with you. I know I could!”

Now he looked fascinated, too. He studied her in a rapt silence. “To what end, Tippy?” he asked after a minute.

Her mind wasn’t working. Her body felt bruised with need.

“End?” she said blankly.

His chest rose and fell. “I do not want to get married again,” he said flatly. “Period.”

Her eyes widened and she realized what she’d been insinuating. She had just enough wit left to spare her self any more embarrassment. “Now, just you wait a minute, buster,” she said, “that was not a proposal of marriage. I hardly know you. Can you cook and clean house? Do you know how to keep a checkbook? Can you darn a sock? And what about shopping in the mall? I absolutely could never think seriously about a man who didn’t like to shop!”

He blinked twice, deliberately, and twisted his ear. “Could you say that again?” he asked politely. “I think my brain took a brief recess…”

“Besides all that, I have high standards for a prospective husband, and you aren’t even in the running yet,” she continued, unabashed. “Stop rushing your fences, Grier. You’re only on probation here.”

His dark eyes twinkled. “Ooookay,” he drawled.

She pulled away from him with a toss of her head. “Don’t get a swelled head just because I agreed to go out with you. And remember that we have a chaperone, so don’t get any ideas.”

He began to smile. “Okay.”

She frowned. “Do you know any two-syllable words?”

He grinned wickedly and started to speak.

“Don’t you dare say it!”

His eyebrows arched.

“I know you don’t believe I can read minds, but I just read yours, and if I were your mother, I’d wash your mouth out with soap!”

The reference to his mother wiped the smile off his face and made him introspective.

She grimaced. “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He frowned. “Why?”

She avoided his eyes and moved toward a skeleton in a case. “I know about your mother. Crissy told me.”

He was utterly silent. “When?”

“After you made me cry,” she confessed, not liking the memory. “She told me it wasn’t personal, that you just didn’t like models. And she told me why.”

He rammed his hands deep into the pockets of his slacks. Terrible memories were eating at him.

She turned and looked up at him. “You can’t forget it, can you, after all those years? Hatred is an acid, Cash. It eats you up inside. And the only person it hurts is you.”

“You’d know,” he said curtly.

“Yes, I would,” she said, not taking offense. “I know how to hate. I had the living hell beaten out of me, so that I was in such pain that I couldn’t even fight back. I was bruised and bleeding, and afterward I was raped over and over again, screaming for help that never came, while my own mother…” She swallowed hard and averted her eyes.

He was sick to his stomach, looking at her, feeling her pain. “Somebody should have killed him,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Our next-door neighbor was a cop,” she said huskily. “I’ve always thought he might be my real father, because he was always looking out for me. He heard the screams and came running—fortunately, it was his night off. He arrested Stanton and my mother and had them both carried off to jail. He took me to juvenile hall himself. He was so kind to me.” She swallowed hard. “Everyone was kind. But my mother could talk her way out of murder, and so could Stanton when he really tried. I knew they’d find a way to get me back, and I’d have preferred death. So I sneaked out past a sleeping guard and took off.”

“Did they look for you?” he asked.

“Apparently, but Cullen covered my tracks and he had enough money to keep me safe. I was made legally his ward when I was fourteen, and my mother wasn’t stupid enough to try to take me away from him. He knew certain people in dangerous professions,” she added—with a wry smile at him—because he certainly fitted the category. “He had a friend who used to be big in mob circles, Marcus Carrera. He’s legitimate now. He has casinos down in the Bahamas and elsewhere, and he and Cullen were partners in a venture of some sort. He’s really reformed in recent years, although his reputation is enough to keep most people from making trouble for him.”

“Carrera’s not gay. I know him myself,” Cash mused. “He’s a decent sort, for a former gangster.”

“Anyway, Cullen told my mother that if she made any attempt to regain custody of me, he’d have a talk with Marcus. She knew about his reputation. She never tried to get custody of Rory, after that.”

“Do you see her?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “No. I don’t see her or talk to her, except through my attorney. But the last I heard she was down to her last dime and talking about the tabloids again.” She looked up at him. “I’m just starting in a new career. I can’t afford to have my name splattered all over in such a way that it would adversely affect my ability to work. Mud sticks. I could lose everything, including Rory, if she started talking about my past. She has nothing to lose.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME YET,” Cash told her quietly. “But I hope you know that I’d do anything I could for you and Rory. All you have to do is call and ask.”

She studied him worriedly. “It wouldn’t be fair to involve you,” she began.

“I have no family,” he said flatly. “Nobody, in all the world.”

“But you do,” she protested. “I mean, you told me that you have brothers and that your father’s still alive…”

His face hardened. “Except for Garon, my oldest brother, I haven’t seen my other brothers or my father in years,” he replied. “My father and I don’t speak.”

“And you and your brothers?” she pressed.

His eyes were dark and troubled. “Only Garon,” he repeated. “He came to see me a few weeks ago. He did say that the others wanted to bury the hatchet.”

“So you’re on speaking terms, at least.”

“You could call it that.”

Her thin brows came together. “You don’t forgive people, do you?”

He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t answer her, either. He turned his attention to the skeleton they were standing in front of.

“She must have been a very special person, your mother,” she ventured.

“She was quiet and gentle, shy with strangers. She loved to quilt, crochet and knit.” He sounded as if the words were being torn from him. “She wasn’t beautiful, or exciting. My father met the junior league model at a cattle show, where they were filming a fashion revue at the same time. He went crazy for her. My mother couldn’t compete. He was cruel to her, because she was in his way. She found out that she had cancer, and she didn’t tell anybody. She just gave up.” His eyes closed. “I stayed with her in the hospital. I wouldn’t even go to school, and my father stopped trying to make me. I was holding her hand when she died. I was nine years old.”

She didn’t even think about other people around them. She turned and put her arms around him, pressing close. “Go ahead,” she whispered at his throat. “Tell me.”

He hated this weakness. He hated it! But his arms closed around her slender body. The offer of comfort was irresistible. He’d held it inside for so long…

He sighed at her ear, his breath harsh and warm. “He had his mistress at the funeral, at my mother’s funeral,” he said coldly. “She hated me, and I hated her. She’d conned two of my three brothers, and they were crazy about her and furious with me because I wouldn’t let her near me. I saw right through her. I knew she was only after Dad’s property and his wealth. So to get even, she threw out all my mother’s things and told my father that I’d called her terrible names and that I’d make my father get rid of her.”