Diana Palmer - Regan's Pride

Sandy glanced at him with faint surprise at the concern he’d betrayed for Coreen. “She’ll cope. She knew Barry wasn’t leaving her much. She’s prepared. She said it didn’t matter.”

“Hell, of course it matters! Someone needs to talk some sense into her! She could sue for a widow’s allowance.”

“I doubt that she will. Money was never one of her priorities, or didn’t you know?”

He didn’t reply. His eyes were narrow and introspective.

“She looks odd, did you notice?” Sandy asked worriedly. “Really odd. I hope she isn’t going to do anything foolish.”

“Let’s go,” Ted said as he got in behind the steering wheel, and he sounded bitter. “I want to talk to that lawyer before we go home.”

Sandy frowned as she looked at him. She was worried, but it wasn’t about Coreen’s money problems, or the will. Coreen was hopelessly clumsy since she’d married Barry. She said that she liked to skydive and go up in sailplanes, especially when she was upset, because she said it relaxed her. But she’d related tales of some of the craziest accidents Sandy had ever heard of. Sometimes she thought that Barry had programmed Coreen to be accident-prone. The few times early in their marriage that she’d seen her friend, before Barry had cut her out of Coreen’s life, he’d enjoyed embarrassing Coreen about her clumsiness.

Ted didn’t know about the accidents. Until the funeral, he’d walked away every time Sandy even mentioned Coreen, almost as if it hurt him to talk about her. He had the strangest attitude about her friend. He didn’t care much for women, she knew, but the way he treated Coreen was intriguing. And the most curious thing had been the way he’d looked, holding Coreen in the living room earlier. The expression on his face had been one of torment, not hatred.

She was never going to understand her brother, she thought. The violence of his reaction to Coreen was completely at odds with the tenderness he’d shown her. Perhaps he did care, in some way, and simply didn’t realize it.

Sandy insisted on staying with Coreen overnight, and she offered her best friend the sanctuary of the ranch until she found a place to live. Coreen refused bluntly, put off by even the thought of having to look at Ted over coffee every morning.

Coreen got her friend away the next morning, after a long and sleepless night blaming herself and remembering Ted’s accusation of the day before.

“We’re just getting moved in. Remember, Ted leased the place, along with the cattle farm, and we moved to Victoria about the time you married Barry. Ted’s away a lot now, over at our cattle farm on the outskirts of Jacobsville, that Emmett Deverell and his family operate for him. We’re going to have thoroughbred horses at our place and some nice saddle mounts. We can go riding like we used to. Won’t you come with me? I’ll work it out with Ted,” Sandy pleaded.

“And let Ted drive me into a nervous breakdown?” came the brittle laugh. “No, thanks. He hates me. I didn’t realize how much until yesterday. He would rather it had been me than Barry, didn’t you see? He thinks I’m a murderess…!”

Sandy hugged her shaken friend close. “My brother is an idiot!” she said angrily. “Listen, he’s not as brutal as he seems when you get to know him, really he isn’t.”

“He’s never been anything except cruel to me,” Coreen replied, subdued. She pulled away. “Tell him to do whatever he likes with the trust, I won’t need it. I can take care of myself. Be happy, Sandy. You’ve got a great career with that computer company, even a part interest. Make your mark in the world, and think of me once in a while. Try to remember all the good times, won’t you?”

Sandy felt a chill run up her spine. Coreen had that restless look about her, all over again. There had been two bad accidents over the years because of Coreen’s passion for flying and skydiving: a broken leg and two cracked ribs. Sandy had gone to see her in the hospital and Barry had been always in residence, refusing to let Coreen talk much about how the accidents had happened.

“Please be careful. You really are a little accident-prone,” she began.

Coreen shivered. “Not really,” she said. “Not anymore. Anyway, the people I skydive with watch out for me. I’ll get better. I’m not suicidal, you know,” she chided gently, and watched her friend blush. “I wouldn’t kill myself over Ted’s bad opinion of me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“Ted wouldn’t want to see you hurt,” Sandy said gently.

“Of course not,” she said placatingly. “Now, go home. You’ve got a life of your own, although I really appreciate having you here. I needed you.”

“Ted came voluntarily,” she said pointedly. “I didn’t ask him to.”

Coreen’s blue eyes darkened with pain. “He came to make me pay for hurting Barry,” she said. “He’s always found ways to make me pay, even for trying to care about him.”

“You know why Ted won’t let anyone close,” Sandy said quietly. “Our mother was much younger than Dad. She ran away with another man when I was just a kid. Dad took it real hard. He gave Ted a vicious distrust of women, and I was the scapegoat until he died. Ted’s kind to me, and he likes pretty women, but he wants no part of marriage.”

“I noticed.”

Sandy watched her closely. “He changed when you married. For the past two years, he’s been a stranger. After he came back from that visit with you and Barry, he took off for Canada and stayed up there for a month and then he moved us to Victoria. He couldn’t bear to talk about you.”

“God knows why, I never did anything to him,” Coreen said. “He knew Barry wanted to marry me and he thought I was after Barry’s money, but he never tried to stop us.”

Sandy let it drop, but not willingly. “Send me a postcard from wherever you move. I’ll phone you then,” she suggested. “We could meet somewhere for lunch.”

Coreen’s eyes were distracted. “Of course.” She glanced at Sandy. “The birthday card…”

“Surprised, were you?” Sandy asked. “So was I. Ted had just talked to Barry. A day or two later, he saw a photograph of you and Barry in the Jacobsville paper he got in Victoria. He became very quiet when he saw it. You weren’t smiling and you looked…fragile.”

Coreen remembered the photograph. She and Barry had been at a charity banquet and he’d been drinking heavily—much more so than usual. She’d been at the end of her rope when the photographer caught them.

“Then Ted remembered that your birthday was upcoming,” Sandy continued, “and he picked out a card to send you. For a man who hates you, he’s amazingly contradictory, isn’t he?”

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