Diana Palmer - Regan's Pride

Ted didn’t have any inhibitions about asking embarrassing questions. He sat down in the big armchair across from the burgundy velvet-covered sofa where Coreen was sitting.

“Why didn’t anybody bring food?” he asked her bluntly. He smiled coldly. “Do your neighbors think you killed him, too?”

Coreen felt the nausea in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it down and lifted cool blue eyes to his. She ignored the blatant insult. “We had no close neighbors, nor did we have any close friends. Barry didn’t like people around us.”

His expression tautened as he glared at her. “And you didn’t like Barry around you,” he said with soft venom. “He told me all about you, Coreen. Everything.”

She could imagine the sort of things Barry had confided. He liked having people think she was frigid. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead, where the beginnings of a headache were forming. “Don’t you have a business to run?” she asked heavily. “Several businesses, in fact?”

He crossed one long leg over the other. “My favorite cousin is dead,” he reminded her. “I’m here for the funeral.”

“The funeral is over,” she said pointedly.

“And you’re four million dollars to the good. At least, until the will is read. Tina’s on the way back from the cemetery.”

“Urged on by you, no doubt,” she said.

His eyebrows arched. “I didn’t need to urge her.”

The pain and torment of the past two years ate at her like acid. Her eyes were haunted. “No, of course you didn’t.”

She got up from the sofa, elegant in the expensive black dress that clung to her slender—too slender— body. He didn’t like noticing how drawn she looked. He knew that she hadn’t loved Barry; she certainly wasn’t mourning him.

“Don’t expect much,” he said with a cold smile.

The accusation in his eyes hurt. “I didn’t kill Barry,” she said.

He stood up, too, slowly. “You let him get into a car and drive when he’d had five neat whiskeys.” He nodded at her look of surprise. “I grew up in Jacobsville. I’m acquainted with most people who live here, and you know that Sandy and I have just moved back into the old homestead. Everybody’s been talking about Barry’s death. You were at a party and he wanted you to drive him home. You refused. So he went alone, and shot right off a bridge.”

So that was how the gossips had twisted it. She stared at Ted without speaking. Sandy hadn’t mentioned that they were coming home to Jacobsville. How was she going to survive living in the same town with Ted?

“No defense?” he challenged mockingly. “No excuses?”

“Why bother?” she returned wearily. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“That’s a fact.” He stuck his hands into his pockets, aware of loud noises in the kitchen. Sandy, reminding him that she was still around.

Coreen folded her hands in front of her to keep them from trembling. Did he have to look at her with such cold accusation?

“Barry wrote to me two weeks ago. He said that he’d changed his will and that I was mentioned in it.” He stared at her mockingly. “Didn’t you know?”

She didn’t. She only knew that Barry had changed the will. She knew nothing of what was in it.

“Tina’s in it, too, I imagine,” he continued with a smile so smug that it made her hands curl.

She was tired. Tired of the aftermath of the nightmare she’d been living, tired of his endless prodding. She pushed back her short hair with a heavy sigh. “Go away, Ted,” she said miserably. “Please…”

She was dead on her feet. The ordeal had crushed her spirit. She felt tears threatening and she turned away to hide them, just as their betraying glitter began to show. She caught her toe in the rug and stumbled as she wheeled around. She gasped as she saw the floor coming up to meet her.

Incredibly he moved forward and caught her by the shoulders. He pulled her around and looked into her pale, drawn face. Then without a word, he slid his arms around her and stood holding her, gently, without passion.

“How did you manage that?” he asked, as if he thought she’d done it deliberately.

She hadn’t. She was always tripping over her own feet these days. Tears stung her eyes as she stood rigidly in his hold, her heart breaking. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, how it had been.

“I didn’t manage it,” she whispered in a raw tone. “I tripped, and not because I couldn’t wait to get your arms around me! I don’t need anything from you!”

Her tone made him bristle with bad temper. “Not even my love?” he asked mockingly, at her ear. “You begged for it, once,” he reminded her coldly.

She shivered. The memory, like most others of the past two years, wasn’t that pleasant. She started to step back but his big hands flattened on her shoulder blades and held her against him. She was aware, too aware, of the clean scent of his whipcord lean body, of the rough sigh of his breath, the movement of his broad chest so close that the tips of her breasts almost touched it. Ted, she thought achingly. Ted!

Her hands were clenched against his chest, to keep them honest. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together.

The hands on her back had become reluctantly caressing, and she felt his warm breath at the hair above her temple. He was so tall that she barely came up to his nose.

Under the warmth of his shirtfront, she could feel hard muscle and thick hair. He was offering her comfort, something she hadn’t had in two long years. But he was like Barry, a strong, domineering man, and she was no longer the young woman who’d worshiped him. She knew what men were under their civilized veneer, and now she couldn’t stand this close to a man without feeling threatened and afraid; Barry had made sure of it. She made a choked, involuntary sound as she felt Ted’s hands contract around her upper arms. He was bruising her without even realizing it. Or did he realize it? Was he thinking of ways to punish her, ways that Barry hadn’t gotten to?

Ted heard the pitiful sound she made, and the control he thought he had went into eclipse. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned, and suddenly wrapped her up tight so that she was standing completely against him from head to toe. His tall body seemed to ripple with plea sure as he felt her against it.

Coreen shuddered. Two years ago, it would have been heaven to stand this close to Ted. But now, there were only vague memories of Ted and bitter, violent ones of Barry. Physical contact made her afraid now.

The tears came, and she stood rigidly in Ted’s embrace and let them fall hotly to her cheeks as she gave in to the pain. The sobs shook her whole body. She cried for Barry, whom she never loved. She cried for herself, because Ted held her in contempt, and even if he hadn’t, Barry had destroyed her as a woman. She wept until she was exhausted, drained.

Sandy stopped at the doorway, her eyes on Ted’s expression as he bent over Coreen’s dark head. Shocked, Sandy quickly made a noise to alert him to her presence, because she knew he wouldn’t want anyone to see the look on his face in that one brief, unguarded moment.

“Coffee!” she announced brightly, and without looking directly at him.

Ted released Coreen slowly, producing a handkerchief that he pressed angrily into her trembling hands. She wouldn’t look up at him. That registered, along with her rigid posture that hadn’t relaxed even when she cried in his arms, and the deep ache inside him that holding her had created.

“Sit down, Corrie, and have a buttered biscuit,” Sandy said as Ted moved quickly away and sat down again. “I found these wrapped up on the table.”

“Mrs. Masterson came early this morning and made breakfast,” Coreen recalled shakily. “I don’t think I ate any.”