Sandra Field - Girl Trouble

“How very convenient for you that rich rhymes with bitch!” Refusing to drop her gaze, Lori yanked at her arm. “Let go! Because that’s it. There’s nothing else we could possibly need to discuss.”

He said in a level voice, “Why did you look so frightened the first time you saw me?”

“Cade,” Lori said, “the past is the past. Dead, gone and buried. I’ve never believed in reincarnation and I’m not going to start now. I don’t want you talking to me. I don’t want you talking to my children. Have you got that straight?”

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything to Rachel and Liddy...I apologize for that.”

“I don’t see how you knew who they were.”

“Come off it—they look enough like you to be clones. Plus I saw a photo of the three of you in the window of a studio downtown. The woman who owns it was in the class this morning.”

“You mean Sally put that photo on display? I’ll have her hide for that!”

Cade didn’t want to talk about Sally. “Just answer me one question. Why are you working at a low-paying job that must get monotonous as all get-out, as well as being hard on the body, when you’ve got a rich husband and a very rich father?”

With a touch of her old haughtiness she ignored his question. “Take a hint, will you?” she retorted. “I have nothing to say to you. Not one word. If you persist in harassing me like this, I’ll lay a complaint and have you barred from the class.”

“For all your faults, you were never a coward,” he drawled, and decided the time had come to fight dirty. “Do you remember the night you threw yourself at me, Lorraine? Or have you conveniently buried that memory along with another one—the way you spoke to me at the gas pumps in August? Remember? I had a black eye, three fractured ribs and two broken fingers.”

For a moment her teeth clamped themselves to her lower lip. Her infinitely kissable lip, thought Cade, and wondered if he’d thrown away any chance of her ever speaking to him again. He hadn’t liked her using the word harass. Hadn’t liked it one bit.

“There’s no point in this!” she cried “I hate rummaging through the past, hauling stuff up that’s better left buried. We went our separate ways all those years ago—and that’s the way it still is.”

Abruptly he dropped her elbow and held out his hands; he was never fully able to remove the traces of grease ingrained in the creases of his skin from his work at the garage, and his knuckles were marred by scars and scratches. “I’m still not good enough for you, am I?” he grated. “I’m just a mechanic. A grease monkey. So far below you that you won’t even have a coffee with me in the university cafeteria.”

“That’s not—” Her eyes widened and her fingers, light as falling leaves, rested on his wrist. “Cade, what happened there?”

A jagged white scar ran from the back of his left hand to the inside of his wrist. He stared down at her fingers, feeling their warmth burn his flesh, and said flatly, “Accident on an oil rig in the North Sea. A couple of years ago. What do you care, Lori?”

She dropped her hand to her side and took a deep breath. Then she said quietly, “We’ve both got scars, haven’t we? Some outside and some in. That’s what living does to you. Please listen to me-I don’t want to hurt you and I certainly don’t look down on you. But you and I have nothing more to say to each other. You must accept that and leave me alone.”

“And where are your scars?”

“Cade...please.”

He’d always loved the shade of her irises, a color that hovered somewhere between blue and green, reminding him of the shimmering reflections along a lakeshore on a summer’s day. Right now those irises were full of appeal. He said nastily, “Very touching. You’ve learned a trick or two since I last knew you.”

She whispered, “You hate me, don’t you?”

“Now you’re beginning to get it. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t?”

Her face hardened. “I can’t give you anything,” she said, each word as brittle as a shard of ice.

“Ray always struck me as the kind of guy who’d be insanely jealous. Is it him you’re afraid of? That somehow he’ll find out you and I have met up again?”

An indecipherable expression crossed her features. “I’m a married woman,” she said, “that’s one—”

“Why aren’t you wearing your rings?”

“Here?” she said ironically. “The famous Cartwright diamonds? I don’t think so.”

Any stray thoughts Cade might have entertained that perhaps she and Ray had divorced in the last ten years—didn’t one out of three marriages end in divorce? —were squashed. Not that it made much difference. The turmoil of emotion lodged somewhere between his stomach and his heart had very little to do with Ray and everything to do with Lori. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. Ray or no Ray. Married or not. Which was scarcely the way to behave with a woman who’d just accused him, more or less accurately, of hating her.

Nor did he have the slightest idea what to say next. Because nothing had gone the way he’d rehearsed it.

She solved his dilemma for him. “I have to get home,” she said coldly. “Goodbye, Cade.”

His voice seemed to be trapped in his throat. He watched her leave, the graceful swing of her hips in her snug-fitting shorts, the proud carriage of her head. Not until the door swung shut behind her did Cade, finally, work out exactly what it was he was feeling. It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t anger. Nothing so simple. It was pain. Outright, all-encompassing pain. Lori Cartwright wanted no more to do with him now than had Lorraine Campbell all those years ago.

Pain? Because a woman he despised was rejecting him? He was losing his mind.

More to the point, what was he going to do about it?

Cade was no nearer an answer to this question by the time he got back to the garage, had shrugged into his overalls and addressed himself to the intricate workings of a custom-built Mercedes. Sam had been checking the idling speed on a Volkswagen Passat that one of the apprentices was working on; he wandered over to Cade and said offhandedly, “Good lunch?”

Cade chose a different wrench and made an indeterminate sound that could have meant anything.

“What did you have?”

“What?”

“To eat,” Sam said patiently.

“Nothing. I forgot. To eat, I mean. I went to the gym.”

“You okay, boy?”

No, thought Cade. I’m not okay. I’ve got a lump in the pit of my stomach as big as the battery in this car and all I can think about is a woman with kingfisher-blue eyes and a body to die for. A body I lust after. Me, who’s managed to keep my sexuality very much under control for years. “I’m fine,” he said. “You want to go over those accounts after we close?”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Sam said mildly. “Just tell me to butt out.”

Finally Cade looked up. “Sam, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s woman troubles, okay?”

“Didn’t take you long...what is it, less than three months since you moved here? Not that I’m surprised. You always did attract the women.”

All except for one. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cade said through gritted teeth.

“Nothing new about that—you never were much of a one for talk.” Sam grinned at him. “We’ll go for a bite to eat once we close and we’ll do the accounts after that. No point starving yourself for the sake of true love. The manual for the Mercedes is in the office if you need it.” Smiling benignly, Sam sauntered off.

True love. Huh, thought Cade. What he felt for Lori was nothing to do with love. Lust, definitely. Frustration beyond anything he’d ever experienced. A rage that frightened him with its force. But not love. No, sir.