Renegade

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME YET,” Cash told her quietly. “But I hope you know that I’d do anything I could for you and Rory. All you have to do is call and ask.”

She studied him worriedly. “It wouldn’t be fair to involve you,” she began.

“I have no family,” he said flatly. “Nobody, in all the world.”

“But you do,” she protested. “I mean, you told me that you have brothers and that your father’s still alive…”

His face hardened. “Except for Garon, my oldest brother, I haven’t seen my other brothers or my father in years,” he replied. “My father and I don’t speak.”

“And you and your brothers?” she pressed.

His eyes were dark and troubled. “Only Garon,” he repeated. “He came to see me a few weeks ago. He did say that the others wanted to bury the hatchet.”

“So you’re on speaking terms, at least.”

“You could call it that.”

Her thin brows came together. “You don’t forgive people, do you?”

He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t answer her, either. He turned his attention to the skeleton they were standing in front of.

“She must have been a very special person, your mother,” she ventured.

“She was quiet and gentle, shy with strangers. She loved to quilt, crochet and knit.” He sounded as if the words were being torn from him. “She wasn’t beautiful, or exciting. My father met the junior league model at a cattle show, where they were filming a fashion revue at the same time. He went crazy for her. My mother couldn’t compete. He was cruel to her, because she was in his way. She found out that she had cancer, and she didn’t tell anybody. She just gave up.” His eyes closed. “I stayed with her in the hospital. I wouldn’t even go to school, and my father stopped trying to make me. I was holding her hand when she died. I was nine years old.”

She didn’t even think about other people around them. She turned and put her arms around him, pressing close. “Go ahead,” she whispered at his throat. “Tell me.”

He hated this weakness. He hated it! But his arms closed around her slender body. The offer of comfort was irresistible. He’d held it inside for so long…

He sighed at her ear, his breath harsh and warm. “He had his mistress at the funeral, at my mother’s funeral,” he said coldly. “She hated me, and I hated her. She’d conned two of my three brothers, and they were crazy about her and furious with me because I wouldn’t let her near me. I saw right through her. I knew she was only after Dad’s property and his wealth. So to get even, she threw out all my mother’s things and told my father that I’d called her terrible names and that I’d make my father get rid of her.”

He drew in a long breath. “The result was predictable, I guess, but I never saw it coming. He sent me away to military school and refused to even let me come home at the holidays until I apologized for being rude to her.” He laughed coldly, his arms hurting around her slender body, but she never protested. “Before I left, I told him that I’d hate him until my dying day. And that I’d never set foot in his house again.”

“He must have seen through her eventually,” she prompted.

His arms loosened, just a little. “When I was twelve,” he replied, “he caught her in bed with one of his friends and kicked her out. She sued him for everything he had. That was when she told him that she’d lied about me, to get me out of the way. She laughed about it. She lost the lawsuit, but she’d cost him his oldest son. She rubbed it in, to get even.”

“How did you know?”

“He wrote me a letter. I refused to answer his phone calls. He said he was sorry, that he wanted me to come home. That he missed me.”

“But you wouldn’t go,” she guessed, almost to her self.

“No. I wouldn’t. I told him I’d never forgive him for what he did to my mother and not to contact me again. I told him if he wouldn’t pay to let me stay in the school, I’d work for my keep, but I wasn’t going back to live with him.” He closed his eyes, remembering the pain and grief and fury he’d felt that day. “So I stayed in military school, made good grades, got promotions. When I graduated, they said he was in the audience, but I never saw him.

“I went right into the army afterward, from one special ops assignment to another. Occasionally I did jobs in concert with other governments. When I got out of the army, I went freelance. I had nothing to live for and nothing to lose, and I got rich.” He stiffened. “I didn’t need anybody in the old days. I was hard as nails. Funny, nobody tells you that there are things you can’t live with, until you’ve already done them.”

Her soft hand reached up to his lean, scarred cheek, and traced it tenderly. “You’re still there,” she said quietly, and her eyes had an eerie paleness as they met his reluctant ones. “You’re trapped in your own past. You can’t get out, because you can’t let go of the pain and the hatred and the bitterness.”

“Can you?” he shot right back. “Can you forgive your attacker?”

She let out a soft breath. “Not yet,” she confessed. “But I’ve tried. And at least I’ve learned to put it in the back of my mind. For a long time, I hated the whole world and then Rory came to live with me. And I realized that I had to put him first and stop dwelling on the past. I can’t let go of it completely, but it’s not as much a burden as it was when I was younger.”

He traced her eyebrows with a lean forefinger. “I’ve never spoken of this to anyone. Ever.”

“I’m a clam,” she replied gently. “At work, I’m everyone’s confidant.”

“Same here,” he confessed with a light smile. “I tell them that governments would topple if I told what I know. Maybe they would, too.”

“My secrets aren’t that important. Feel better?” she asked, smiling up at him.

He sighed. “In fact, I do,” he said, surprised. He chuckled. “Maybe you’re a witch,” he mused, “putting spells on me.”

“I had an uncle who said our family came from Druids in ancient Ireland. Of course, he also said we had relatives who were priests and one who was a horse thief.” She laughed. “He hated my mother and tried to get custody of me when I was ten. He died of a heart at tack that same year.”

“Tough break.”

“My life has been one long tough break,” she replied. “Sort of like yours. We’ve both been through the wars and survived.”

“You don’t have my memories,” he said quietly.

“You might think of bad memories like boils,” she commented, not totally facetiously. “They get worse until you lance them.”

“Not mine, honey.”

Her eyebrows lifted. She was fascinated by the endearment, uttered in that soft, deep tone. She colored a little. Odd, because she hated that word when it was tossed around by a parade of would-be lovers who used it like a weapon against her femininity.

He lifted a single eyebrow and looked roguish. “You like that, do you?” he drawled. “And you know that I don’t use endearments as a rule, too, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I know a lot of things about you that I shouldn’t.”

His chin lifted and he looked down his long, straight nose at her. “I only thought you were dangerous in Jacobsville. Now I know you are.”

She grinned. “Glad you noticed.”

He laughed and let her go. “Come on. We’re going to qualify as an exhibit if we stand here much longer.” He held out his hand.

She cocked her head. “Is that the only body part you’re offering me?” she asked, and then colored wildly when she realized what she’d just said.

He burst out laughing, linking her fingers with his. “Don’t be pushy,” he chided. “We haven’t even had a torrid petting session yet.”

She cleared her throat. “Don’t get your hopes up. I have a prudish nature.”

“It won’t last long around me.”

“I call that conceit.”

“You won’t when you see me in action,” he teased, and his fingers contracted. His voice dropped as he leaned closer. “I know twelve really good positions, and I’m as slow as the blues in bed. If I weren’t so modest, I could even give you references. I am a sensual experience that you’d never forget.”