Christmas Cowboy Page 7

  “You were always such a private person,” she reminded him. “You never talked about yourself or your brothers. And we never really talked that much when we were together.”

  “We spent more time kissing,” he recalled. “I was too wrapped up in trying to get you into bed to care how well we knew each other,” he said with self-contempt. “I wasted a lot of time.”

  “You said that we shouldn’t look back.”

  “I’m trying not to. It’s hard, sometimes.” He moved forward to take her hands under his on the table. “I like classical music, but I’m just as happy with country or pop. I like a good chess game. I enjoy science fiction movies and old Westerns, the silent kind. I’m an early riser, I work hard and I don’t cheat on my tax returns. I went to college to learn animal husbandry, but I never graduated.”

  She smiled. “Do you like fried liver?”

  He made a horrible face. “Do you?”

  She made the same face. “But I don’t like sweets very much, either,” she said, remembering that he didn’t.

  “Good thing. Nobody around here eats them.”

  “I remember.” She looked around at the comfortably big kitchen. There was a new electric stove and a huge refrigerator, flanked by an upright freezer. The sink was a double stainless-steel one, with a window above it overlooking the pasture where the colts were kept. Next to that was a dishwasher. There was plenty of cabinet space, too.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  She smiled. “It’s a dream of a kitchen. I’ll bet Mrs. Culbertson loves working in here.”

  “Would you?”

  She met his eyes and felt her own flickering at the intensity of his stare.

  “If you can make homemade bread, you have to be an accomplished cook,” he continued. “There’s a high-tech mixer in the cabinet, and every gourmet tool known to man. Or woman.”

  “It’s very modern.”

  “It’s going to be very deserted in about three weeks,” he informed.

  “Why is Mrs. Culbertson quitting?”

  “Her husband has cancer, and she wants to retire and stay at home with him, for as long as he’s got,” he said abruptly. He toyed with his coffee cup. “They’ve been married for fifty years.” He took a sharp breath, and his eyes were very dark as they met hers. “I’ve believed all my life that no marriage could possibly last longer than a few years. People change. Situations change. Jobs conflict.” He shrugged. “Then Mrs. Culbertson came here to work, with her husband. And I had to eat my words.” He lowered his eyes back to the cup. “They were forever holding hands, helping each other, walking in the early morning together and talking. She smiled at him, and she was beautiful. He smiled back. Nobody had to say that they loved each other. It was obvious.”

  “My parents were like that,” she recalled. “Dad and Mom loved each other terribly. When she died, I almost lost him, too. He lived for me. But the last thing he said on his deathbed—” she swallowed, fighting tears “—was her name.”

  He got up from the table abruptly and went to the window over the sink. He leaned against it, breathing heavily, as if what she’d said had affected him powerfully. And, in fact, it had.

  She watched him through tears. “You don’t like hearing about happy marriages. Why?”

  “Because I had that same chance once,” he said in a low, dull tone. “And I threw it away.”

  She wondered who the woman had been. Nobody had said that any of the Hart brothers had ever been engaged. But there could have been someone she hadn’t heard about.

  “You’re the one who keeps saying we can’t look back,” she remarked, dabbing her eyes with her napkin.

  “It’s impossible not to. The past makes us the people we are.” He sighed wearily. “My parents had five of us in ten years. My mother hadn’t wanted the first child. She didn’t have a choice. He took away her checkbook and kept her pregnant. She hated him and us in equal measure. When she left it was almost a relief.” He turned and looked across the room at her. “I’ve never been held with tenderness. None of us have. It’s why we’re the way we are, it’s why we don’t have women around. The only thing we know about women is that they’re treacherous and cold and cruel.”

  “Oh, Corrigan,” she said softly, wincing.

  His eyes narrowed. “Desire is a hot and unmanageable thing. Sex can be pleasant enough. But I’d gladly be impotent to have a woman hold me the way you did in my office and kiss my eyes.” His face went as hard as stone. “You can’t imagine how it felt.”

  “But I can,” she replied. She smiled. “You kissed my eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked so lost, so lonely. She got up from the table and went to him, paused in front of him. Her hands pressed gently against his broad chest as she looked up into his eyes.

  “You know more about me than I’ve ever told anyone else,” he said quietly. “Now don’t you think it’s time you told me what happened to you in New York?”

  She sighed worriedly. She’d been ashamed to tell him how stupid she’d been. But now there was a bigger reason. It was going to hurt him. She didn’t understand how she knew it, but she did. He was going to blame himself all over again for the way they’d separated.

  “Not now,” she said.

  “You’re holding back. Don’t let’s have secrets between us,” he said solemnly.

  “It will hurt,” she said.

  “Most everything does, these days,” he murmured, and rubbed his thigh.

  She took his hand and held it warmly. “Come and sit down.”

  “Not in here.”

  He drew her into the living room. It was warm and dim and quiet. He led her to his big armchair, dropped into it and pulled her down into his arms.

  “Now, tell me,” he said, when her cheek was pillowed on his hard chest.

  “It’s not a nice story.”

  “Tell me.”

  She rubbed her hand against his shirt and closed her eyes. “I found an ad in the paper. It was one of those big ads that promise the stars, just the thing to appeal to a naive country girl who thinks she can just walk into a modeling career. I cut out the ad and called the number.”

  “And?”

  She grimaced. “It was a scam, but I didn’t know it at first. The man seemed very nice, and he had a studio in a good part of town. Belinda had gone to Europe for the week on an assignment for the magazine where she worked, and I didn’t know anyone else to ask about it. I assumed that it was legitimate.” Her eyes closed and she pressed closer, feeling his arm come around her tightly, as if he knew she was seeking comfort.

  “Go ahead,” he coaxed gently.

  “He gave me a few things to try on and he took pictures of me wearing them. But then I was sitting there, just in a two-piece bathing suit, and he told me to take it off.” His breathing stilled under her ear. “I couldn’t,” she snapped. “I just couldn’t let him look at me like that, no matter how good a job I could get, and I said so. Then he got ugly. He told me that he was in the business of producing nude calendars and that if I didn’t do the assignment, he’d take me to court and sue me for not fulfilling the contract I’d signed. No, I didn’t read it,” she said when he asked. “The fine print did say that I agreed to pose in any manner the photographer said for me to. I knew that I couldn’t afford a lawsuit.”

  “And?” He sounded as cold as ice.

  She bit her lower lip. “While I was thinking about alternatives, he laughed and came toward me. I could forget the contract, he said, if I was that prudish. But he’d have a return for the time he’d wasted on me. He said that he was going to make me sleep with him.”

  “Good God!”

  She smoothed his shirt, trying to calm him. Tears stung her eyes. “I fought him, but I wasn’t strong enough. He had me undressed before I knew it. We struggled there on the floor and he started hitting me.” Her voice broke and she felt Corrigan stiffen against her. “He had a diamond ring on his right hand. That’s how he cut my cheek. I didn
’t even feel it until much later. He wore me down to the point that I couldn’t kick or bite or scream. I would never have been able to get away. But one of his girls, one of the ones who didn’t mind posing nude, came into the studio. She was his lover and she was furious when she saw him with me…like that. She started screaming and throwing things at him. I grabbed my clothes and ran.”

  She shivered even then with the remembered humiliation, the fear that he was going to come after her. “I managed to get enough on to look halfway decent, and I walked all the way back to Belinda’s apartment.” She swallowed. “When I was rational enough to talk, I called the police. They arrested him and charged him with attempted rape. But he said that I’d signed a contract and I wasn’t happy with the money he offered me, and that I’d only yelled rape because I wanted to back out of the deal.”

  He bit off a curse. “And then what?”

  “He won,” she said in a flat, defeated tone. “He had friends and influence. But the story was a big deal locally for two or three days, and he was furious. His brother had a nasty temper and he started making obscene phone calls to me and making threats as well. I didn’t want to put Belinda in any danger, so I moved out while she was still in Europe and never told her a thing about what had happened. I got a job in New Jersey and worked there for two years. Then Belinda moved out to Long Island and asked me to come back. There was a good job going with a law firm that had an office pretty close to her house. I had good typing skills by then, so I took it.”

  “What about the brother?” he asked.

  “He didn’t know where to find me. I learned later that he and the photographer were having trouble with the police about some pornography ring they were involved in. Ironically they both went to prison soon after I left Manhattan. But for a long time, I was even afraid to come home, in case they had anyone watching me. I was afraid for my father.”

  “You poor kid,” he said heavily. “Good God! And after what had happened here…” His teeth ground together as he remembered what he’d done to her.

  “Don’t,” she said gently, smoothing out the frown between his heavy eyebrows. “I never blamed you. Never!”

  He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth. “I wanted to come after you,” he said. “Your father stopped me. He said that you hated the very mention of my name.”

  “I did, at first, but only because I was so hurt by the way things had worked out.” She looked at his firm chin. “But I would have been glad to see you, just the same.”

  “I wasn’t sure of that.” He traced her mouth. “I thought that it might be as well to leave things the way they were. You were so young, and I was wary of complications in my life just then.” He sighed softly. “There’s one other thing you don’t know about me.”

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  He smiled softly. “We’re sharing our deepest secrets. I suppose I might as well. We have a fifth brother. His name is Simon.”

  “You mentioned him the first time you came over, with that bouquet.”

  He nodded. “He’s in San Antonio. Just after you left town, he was in a wreck and afterward, in a coma. We couldn’t all go back, and leave the ranch to itself. So I went. It was several weeks before I could leave him. By the time I got back, you weren’t living with Belinda anymore and I couldn’t make her tell me where you were. Soon after that, your father came down on my head like a brick and I lost heart.”

  “You called Belinda?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wanted to find me?”

  He searched her eyes quietly. “I wanted to know that you were safe, that I hadn’t hurt you too badly. At least I found that much out. I didn’t hope for more.”

  She traced his eyebrows, lost in the sudden intimacy. “I dreamed about you,” she said. “But every time, you’d come toward me and I’d wake up.”

  He traced the artery in her throat down to her collarbone. “My dreams were a bit more erotic.” His eyes darkened. “I had you in ways and places you can’t imagine, each more heated than the one before. I couldn’t wait to go to bed, so that I could have you again.”

  She blushed. “At first, you mean, just after I left.”

  His hand smoothed onto her throat. “For eight years. Every night of my life.”

  She caught her breath. She could hardly get it at all. His eyes were glittering with feeling. “All that time?”

  He nodded. He looked at her soft throat where the blouse had parted, and his face hardened. His fingers trailed lightly down onto her bodice, onto her breast. “I haven’t touched a woman since you left Jacobsville,” he said huskily. “I haven’t been a man since then.”

  Her wide eyes filled with tears. She had a good idea of what it would be like for a man like Corrigan to be incapable with a woman. “Was it because we fought, at the last?”

  “It was because we made love,” he whispered. “Have you forgotten what we did?”

  She averted her eyes, hiding them in embarrassment.

  “You left a virgin,” he said quietly, “but only technically. We had each other in your bed,” he reminded her, “naked in each other’s arms. We did everything except go those last few aching inches. Your body was almost open to me, I was against you, we were moving together…and you cried out when you felt me there. You squirmed out from under me and ran.”

  “I was so afraid,” she whispered shamefully. “It hurt, and I kept remembering what I’d been told…”

  “It wouldn’t have hurt for long,” he said gently. “And it wouldn’t have been traumatic, not for you. But you didn’t know that, and I was too excited to coax you. I lost my temper instead of reassuring you. And we spent so many years apart, suffering for it.”

  She laid her hot cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to remember how far we went,” she said through a mist. “I hurt you terribly when I drew back…”

  “Not that much,” he said. “We’d made love in so many ways already that I wasn’t that hungry.” He smoothed her soft hair. “I wanted an excuse to make you leave.”

  “Why?”

  His lips touched her hair. “Because I wanted to make you pregnant,” he whispered, feeling her body jump as he said it. “And it scared me to death. You see, modern women don’t want babies, because they’re a trap. My mother taught me that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “That’s not true!” She pressed closer. “I would have loved having a baby, and I’d never have felt trapped!” she said, her voice husky with feeling. Especially your baby, she added silently. “I didn’t know any of your background, especially anything about your mother. You never told me.”

  His chest rose and fell abruptly. “I couldn’t. You scared me to death. Maybe I deliberately upset you, to make you run. But when I got what I thought I wanted, I didn’t want it. It hurt when you wouldn’t even look at me, at the bus stop. I guess I’d shamed you so badly that you couldn’t.” He sighed. “I thought you were modern, that we’d enjoy each other and that would be the end of it. I got the shock of my life that last night. I couldn’t even deal with it. I lost my head.”

  She lifted her face and looked into his eyes. “You were honest about it. You’d already said that you wanted no part of marriage or a family, that all you could offer me was a night in your arms with no strings attached. But I couldn’t manage to stop, or stop you, until the very last. I was raised to think of sleeping around as a sin.”

  His face contorted. He averted his eyes to keep her from seeing the pain in them. “I didn’t know that until it was much too late. Sometimes, you don’t realize how much things mean to you until you lose them.”

  His fingers moved gently in her hair while she stood quietly, breathing uneasily. “It wasn’t just our mother who soured us on women. Simon was married,” he said after a minute. “He was the only one of us who ever was. His wife got pregnant the first time they were together, but she didn’t want a child. She didn’t really want Simon, she just wanted to be rich. He was cr
azy about her.” He sighed painfully. “She had an abortion and he found out later, accidentally. They had a fight on the way home from one of her incessant parties. He wrecked the car, she died and he lost an arm. That’s why he doesn’t live on the ranch. He can’t do the things he used to do. He’s embittered and he’s withdrawn from the rest of us.” He laughed a little. “You think the four of us hate women. You should see Simon.”

  She stirred in his arms. “Poor man. He must have loved her very much.”

  “Too much. That’s another common problem we seem to have. We love irrationally and obsessively.”

  “And reluctantly,” she guessed.

  He laughed. “And that.”

  He let her go with a long sigh and stared down at her warmly. “I suppose I’d better take you home. If you’re still here when the boys get back, they’ll tie you to the stove.”

  She smiled. “I like your brothers.” She hesitated. “Corrigan, they aren’t really going to try to force you to marry me, are they?”

  “Of course not,” he scoffed. “They’re only teasing.”

  “Okay.”

  It was a good thing, he thought, that she couldn’t see his fingers crossed behind his back.

  He took her home, pausing to kiss her gently at the front door.

  “I’ll be along tomorrow night,” he said softly. “We’ll go to a movie. There’s a new one every Saturday night at the Roxy downtown.”

  She searched his eyes and tried to decide if he was doing this because he wanted to or because his brothers were pestering him.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry so much. You’re home, it’s going to be Christmas, you have a job and plenty of friends. It’s going to be the best Christmas you’ve ever had.”

  She smiled back. “Maybe it will be,” she said, catching some of his own excitement. Her gaze caressed his face. They were much more like friends, with all the dark secrets out in the open. But his kisses had made her too hungry for him. She needed time to get her emotions under control. Perhaps a day would do it. He was throwing out broad hints of some sort, but he hadn’t spoken one word of love. In that respect, nothing had changed.