Renegade

She looked up, surprised by the immediate response of his body. She knew why men’s bodies grew hard like that, but it had always been repugnant to her before. Now, it was fascinating, glorious. Her lips parted as she searched his stormy eyes. He wanted her!

She started to move again, desperate to please him, but his hands suddenly dropped to her slender hips and grasped them roughly.

“If you do that again,” he said through his teeth, “there’s going to be a whole new definition of public exhibition, and we’re both going to figure in it prominently.”

“Oh. Oh!” She swallowed hard, looking around with embarrassing color. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be watching.

He put her completely away and straightened, reciting multiplication tables in his head to divert his thoughts. It had been a long dry spell, but even so, his reaction to Tippy was unsettling.

She was feeling something similar. She’d gone from frigid apprehension to passionate anticipation in the space of seconds. Suddenly, all she could think about was a bed, with Cash in the middle of it. She could al most picture that powerful body without clothes…

She made a faint sound and couldn’t have looked at Cash to save her life.

He couldn’t help the soft chuckle that escaped his tight throat. She was an open book. It was flattering to know that he could arouse her with such innocent love play. She stirred him up, too, but he didn’t trust her. Or did he? He’d never told another living soul about his wife.

As if seeking comfort, her beautifully manicured hands went to his shirt and pressed there, unsteadily. She kept a discreet distance between her body and his. She didn’t dare look up at him. She’d never felt so insecure, so shy. She’d never felt so happy or so…stimulated.

His big hands caught her tiny waist and pressed there. Around them, people were moving, talking, laughing. But they were alone in the world. It was a sensation Cash could never remember feeling in his life.

“I could hurt you,” he bit off. “And I don’t mean physically. I’m a bad risk. I’m too used to my own space. I don’t share. I don’t…feel much emotion any more.”

He sounded vulnerable. She was fascinated. Her soft green eyes looked up into his turbulent dark ones and it was like lightning striking. She actually caught her breath, and it was audible. “I’m feeling things I never dreamed I could.”

His hands jerked on her waist. His teeth clenched. “It would be suicide!” he said roughly.

She remembered a line from a book, and her eyes were brilliant as she whispered, with faint amusement, “Well, do you want to live forever?”

It broke the tension. He laughed.

Her face was radiant. “I didn’t know if I could be with a man, even a few days ago,” she confessed huskily. “But I’m almost sure I could be with you. I know I could!”

Now he looked fascinated, too. He studied her in a rapt silence. “To what end, Tippy?” he asked after a minute.

Her mind wasn’t working. Her body felt bruised with need.

“End?” she said blankly.

His chest rose and fell. “I do not want to get married again,” he said flatly. “Period.”

Her eyes widened and she realized what she’d been insinuating. She had just enough wit left to spare her self any more embarrassment. “Now, just you wait a minute, buster,” she said, “that was not a proposal of marriage. I hardly know you. Can you cook and clean house? Do you know how to keep a checkbook? Can you darn a sock? And what about shopping in the mall? I absolutely could never think seriously about a man who didn’t like to shop!”

He blinked twice, deliberately, and twisted his ear. “Could you say that again?” he asked politely. “I think my brain took a brief recess…”

“Besides all that, I have high standards for a prospective husband, and you aren’t even in the running yet,” she continued, unabashed. “Stop rushing your fences, Grier. You’re only on probation here.”

His dark eyes twinkled. “Ooookay,” he drawled.

She pulled away from him with a toss of her head. “Don’t get a swelled head just because I agreed to go out with you. And remember that we have a chaperone, so don’t get any ideas.”

He began to smile. “Okay.”

She frowned. “Do you know any two-syllable words?”

He grinned wickedly and started to speak.

“Don’t you dare say it!”

His eyebrows arched.

“I know you don’t believe I can read minds, but I just read yours, and if I were your mother, I’d wash your mouth out with soap!”

The reference to his mother wiped the smile off his face and made him introspective.

She grimaced. “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He frowned. “Why?”

She avoided his eyes and moved toward a skeleton in a case. “I know about your mother. Crissy told me.”

He was utterly silent. “When?”

“After you made me cry,” she confessed, not liking the memory. “She told me it wasn’t personal, that you just didn’t like models. And she told me why.”

He rammed his hands deep into the pockets of his slacks. Terrible memories were eating at him.

She turned and looked up at him. “You can’t forget it, can you, after all those years? Hatred is an acid, Cash. It eats you up inside. And the only person it hurts is you.”

“You’d know,” he said curtly.

“Yes, I would,” she said, not taking offense. “I know how to hate. I had the living hell beaten out of me, so that I was in such pain that I couldn’t even fight back. I was bruised and bleeding, and afterward I was raped over and over again, screaming for help that never came, while my own mother…” She swallowed hard and averted her eyes.

He was sick to his stomach, looking at her, feeling her pain. “Somebody should have killed him,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Our next-door neighbor was a cop,” she said huskily. “I’ve always thought he might be my real father, because he was always looking out for me. He heard the screams and came running—fortunately, it was his night off. He arrested Stanton and my mother and had them both carried off to jail. He took me to juvenile hall himself. He was so kind to me.” She swallowed hard. “Everyone was kind. But my mother could talk her way out of murder, and so could Stanton when he really tried. I knew they’d find a way to get me back, and I’d have preferred death. So I sneaked out past a sleeping guard and took off.”

“Did they look for you?” he asked.

“Apparently, but Cullen covered my tracks and he had enough money to keep me safe. I was made legally his ward when I was fourteen, and my mother wasn’t stupid enough to try to take me away from him. He knew certain people in dangerous professions,” she added—with a wry smile at him—because he certainly fitted the category. “He had a friend who used to be big in mob circles, Marcus Carrera. He’s legitimate now. He has casinos down in the Bahamas and elsewhere, and he and Cullen were partners in a venture of some sort. He’s really reformed in recent years, although his reputation is enough to keep most people from making trouble for him.”

“Carrera’s not gay. I know him myself,” Cash mused. “He’s a decent sort, for a former gangster.”

“Anyway, Cullen told my mother that if she made any attempt to regain custody of me, he’d have a talk with Marcus. She knew about his reputation. She never tried to get custody of Rory, after that.”

“Do you see her?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “No. I don’t see her or talk to her, except through my attorney. But the last I heard she was down to her last dime and talking about the tabloids again.” She looked up at him. “I’m just starting in a new career. I can’t afford to have my name splattered all over in such a way that it would adversely affect my ability to work. Mud sticks. I could lose everything, including Rory, if she started talking about my past. She has nothing to lose.”

CHAPTER FOUR