Regan's Pride Read online

  A sudden buzz of conversation brought Coreen back to the present. Shivering from the memory, she focused her eyes on the big oak desk where the lawyer was sitting and realized that he was almost through reading the will.

  “That does it, I’m afraid,” he concluded, peering over his small glasses at them. “Everything goes to his mother. The one exception is the stallion he willed to his cousin, Ted Regan. And a legacy of one hundred thousand dollars is to be left to Mrs. Barry Tarleton, under the administration of Ted Regan, to be held in trust for her until she reaches the age of twenty-five. Are there any questions?”

  Ted was scowling as he looked at Coreen, but there was no shock or surprise on her face. There was only stiff resignation and a frightening calmness.

  Tina got to her feet. She glanced at Coreen coldly. “I’ll give you a little while to get out of the house. Just to stem any further gossip, you understand, not out of any regard. I blame you for what happened to my son. I always will.” She turned and left the room, her expression foreboding.

  Coreen didn’t reply. She stared at her hands in her lap. She couldn’t look at Ted. She was homeless, and Ted controlled the only money she had. She could imagine that she’d have to go on her knees to him to get a new pair of stockings. She was going to have to get a job, quick.

  “She could have waited until tomorrow,” Sandy muttered to Ted when they were back outside, watching Tina climb into the Lincoln.

  “Why did he do that?” Ted asked with open puzzlement. “For God’s sake, he was worth millions! He’s involved me in it, and she’ll have literally nothing for another year, until she turns twenty-five! She’ll even have to ask me for gas money!”

  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 th
e 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?”

  She wondered at Ted’s motives. Had he known how jealous Barry was of him? Had he done it to cause trouble? She couldn’t bear to believe that he had. It was the card that had provoked Barry to threaten her that last night. Had it only been a week ago? She shivered mentally. She hugged Sandy and watched the other woman leave. When the car was out of sight, she picked up the telephone receiver and dialed.

  “Hello, Randy?” she asked with a bright laugh. “When’s the next jump? Tomorrow? Well, count me in. No, I’m not afraid of storms. It probably won’t even be cloudy, you know how often they miss the forecast. Besides, I need a diversion. I’ll see you out at the airfield at eight.”

  “Sure thing, lovely” came the teasing reply. She put the phone down and went to make sure her borrowed skydiving outfit was clean. She wouldn’t think about getting out of the house right now. Tomorrow afternoon would be soon enough to start searching for an apartment and a job.

  It was overcast, but not enough to deter the enthusiastic crowd of jumpers. The jump from the plane was exhilarating, and even the sting from the faint pull of the stitches below her collarbone didn’t detract from the pleasure of free fall. Coreen had always loved the feeling she got from it. Earthbound people would never experience the rush of adrenaline that came from danger, the surge of emotion that rivaled the greatest pleasure she’d ever known—an unexpected glimpse of Ted Regan’s face.

  She pulled the cords to turn the parachute, looking for her mark below. Two other skydivers were heading down below her. But a gust of wind began to move her in a direction she didn’t want to go, and when she looked up, she saw a gigantic thunderhead and a streak of lightning.

  It was all she could do not to panic, and in her frantic haste to get her parachute going in the right direction, she overcontrolled it.

  She was headed for a group of power lines. She’d read about ballooners who went into those electrical lines and didn’t live to tell about it. She could see herself hitting them, see the sparks.

  With a helpless cry as the thunder echoed around her, she jerked on the cord and moved her body, trying to force the stubborn chute to ignore the wind and bend to her will.

  It was a losing battle, and she knew it. But she had nerve, and she wasn’t going to give up until the last minute. The lightning forked past her and she closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and tried again to change direction.

  The power lines were coming up. She was almost on them. She pulled her legs up with bent knees and jerked the chute. Her feet almost touched them, almost…but another gust of wind picked her up and moved her just a few inches, just enough to spare her landing on those innocent-looking black cables.

  She let out a heavy sigh of relief. Rain had started to fall. She closed her eyes and through the thunder and lightning, she gave a prayer of thanks.

  When she opened her eyes again, aware of the terrible darkness all around her as the unpredicted storm blew in, she saw what her fear had caused her to miss just minutes ago. There was a line of trees ahead, a thick conglomeration of pines and a few deciduous trees. They were right in the way. There was no cleared field, no place for her to land. She was going to go into those trees.

  What if she landed in the very top of one? Would it take her weight, or would she fall to her death? And what about that huge oak? If she got caught in those leafy limbs, she could still be there when the first frost came!

  The thought would have amused her once, but now she was too bent on survival to make jokes.

  She didn’t try to change direction. There was no use. Lightning streaked past her and hit one of the trees, smoke rising from it.

  She thought that this was going to make an interesting addition to the obituary column, but at least she wouldn’t go out in any dull manner.

  She allowed herself one last thought, of Ted Regan’s face when he read about it. She hoped that whoever planned her funeral wouldn’t ruin it by letting Ted stand over her and make nasty remarks about her character.

  The trees were coming closer. She could see the branches individually now, and with a sense of resignation, she let her body relax. If the fall didn’t get her, the lightning probably would. She’d chosen her fate, and here it was.

  It hadn’t been a suicide attempt, although people would probably think so. She’d only wanted the freedom of the sky while she tried to come to grips with the rest of her life. She’d wanted to forget Ted’s accusations and the cold way he’d looked at her.

  What she remembered, though, was the rough, hungry clasp of his arms around her. Had he felt pity, for those few seconds when his embrace had bruised her? Or had it been a reflex action, the natural reaction of a man to having a woman in his arms? She’d never know.

  She could picture his blue eyes and feel his mouth on hers, all those long years ago. She closed her own, waiting for death to come up and claim her. Her last conscious thought was that in whatever realm she progressed to, perhaps she could forget the one man she’d ever loved. And once she was gone, perhaps Ted could forgive her for everything he thought she’d done.

  The impact was sudden, and surprisingly without pain. She felt the roughness of leaves and limbs and a hard, rough blow to her head. And then she felt nothing at all.

  Chapter 3

  Ted Regan had been sitting at his desk trying to make sense of a new prospectus. Sandy had only just gone out the door, after spending the night at the ranch. Suddenly, the front door was opened with force and his sister came running back in, red-faced and shaking.

  “What is it?” he asked quickly, putting the papers aside.

  “It’s Corrie.” She choked. Tears were running down her cheeks. “It was on the radio…she’s been in a terrible accident!”

  His heart stopped, started and ran away. He jerked out of his chair and took her by the arms. It wasn’t pity for her that motivated him; it was the horror that made him go cold. “Is she dead?” She couldn’t answer and he actually shook her. “Tell me! Is she all right?”

  His white, desperate face shocked her into speech. “She was taken to the Jacobsville General emergency room.” She choked out the words. “The radio said she was skydiving and fell into some trees or power lines or something. They don’t know her condition.”

  He didn’t stop to get his hat. He shepherded her out the door at a dead run.

  Later, he didn’t even remember the ride to the hospital. He marched straight to the desk, demanding to know how Coreen was and where she was. The woman clerk didn’t try to deny him the information. She told him at once.

  He walked straight into the recovery room, despite loud objections from a nurse.

  Coreen was lying on a stretcher there, clad in a faded hospital gown. There were cuts and bruises all over her face and arms, and she was asleep.

  “How is she?” he demanded.

  The middle-aged nurse who was checking her vital signs nodded. “She’ll be fine,” she told him. “Dr. Burns can tell you anything you want to know. You’re a relative?”

  Technically he was, he supposed. If he said no, they wouldn’t let him near her. “Yes,” he said.

  “Dr. Burns?” the nurse called to a green-gowned man outside the door. He excused himself from the doctor to whom he was speaking and came into the recovery room.

  “This gentleman is a relative of Mrs. Tarleton.”

  Ted introduced himself and the doctor shook his hand warmly.

  “I hope you know how much we all appreciate the pediatric critical care unit you funded here, Mr. Regan,” the doctor said, and the nurse became flustered as she realized who their distinguished visitor was.

  “It was my pleasure. How’s Corrie?” he asked, nodding toward the pale woman on the bed.

  “Minor concussion, a cracked rib and a burst appen
dix. We’ve repaired the damage, but someone should tell her not to skydive during thunderstorms,” he said frankly. “This is her second close call in as many months. And we won’t even go into the damage she sustained in the glider crash or her most recent brush with a sheet of tin…”

  Ted went very still. “What glider crash?”

  Dr. Burns lifted an eyebrow. “You said you were a relative?”

  “Distant,” he confessed. “Her husband was buried yesterday.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’m from Victoria. I’ve just moved back here, into my grandfather’s house.”

  “Oh, yes, the old Regan homeplace.”

  “The same,” Ted continued. “I’d lost touch with Barry in the past few weeks, but we were cousins and fairly close. Funny, he never told me about any of Corrie’s mishaps.”

  “That’s surprising,” the doctor said coolly, a sentiment that Ted could have seconded. He glanced down at Coreen’s still form. “She’s got two left feet. Her husband told me that a woman friend of Coreen’s let her take up the glider and she flew it too close to the trees. Good thing it was insured. She needs to be watched. And I mean watched, until she’s past this latest trauma. Then I’d strongly suggest some counseling. Nobody has so many accidents without an underlying cause. Perhaps she’s running from something. Running scared.”

  Ted thought about that later when he and Sandy were drinking black coffee in the waiting room, waiting for them to move Corrie down into a private room. She was conscious, but barely out from under the anesthetic.

  “Did you know that she’d had this sort of accident before?” Ted asked his sister.

  She nodded. “I went to see her in the hospital. Or tried to. Barry didn’t like it that I was there, and he wouldn’t let me do more than wish her a speedy recovery. He kept everyone away from her, even then.”