Regan's Pride

“You’re welcome, Mrs. Tarleton,” Henry said gently.

Sandy went into the house with Coreen, noticing with curiosity that there seemed to be no maid, no butler, no household staff at all. In a house with eight bedrooms and bathrooms, that seemed odd.

Coreen saw the puzzled look on her friend’s face. She took off her veiled hat and laid it on the hall table. “Barry fired all the staff except Henry. He tried to fire Henry, too, but I convinced him that he needed a chauffeur.”

There was no reply.

Coreen turned and stared at Sandy levelly. “Do you think I’m sleeping with Henry?”

Sandy pursed her lips. “Not now that I’ve seen him,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.

Coreen laughed, for the first time in days. She turned and led the way into the living room. “Sit down and I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

“You will not. I’ll make it. You’re the one who needs to rest. Have you slept at all?”

The shorter woman’s shoulders lifted and fell. She was just five foot five in her stocking feet, for all her slenderness. Sandy, three inches taller, towered over her. “The nightmares won’t stop,” she confessed with a small twist of her lips.

“Did the doctor give you anything to make you sleep?”

“I don’t take drugs.”

“A sleeping pill when someone has died violently is hardly considered a drug.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to be out of control.” She sat down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”

The front door opened and closed. There hadn’t been a knock, and only one person considered himself privileged enough to just walk in. Coreen refused to look up as Ted entered the living room, loosening his tie as he came. He wasn’t wearing his Stetson, or even the dress boots he usually favored. He looked elegant and strange in his expensive suit.

“I was just about to make coffee,” Sandy said, giving him a warning look. “Want some?”

“Sure. A couple of leftover biscuits would be nice, too. I didn’t stop for breakfast.”

“I’ll see what I can find to fix.” Sandy didn’t mention that it was odd no one had offered to bring food. It was an accepted tradition in most rural areas, and this was Jacobsville, Texas. It was a very close-knit community.

Ted didn’t have any inhibitions about asking embarrassing questions. He sat down in the big armchair across from the burgundy velvet-covered sofa where Coreen was sitting.

“Why didn’t anybody bring food?” he asked her bluntly. He smiled coldly. “Do your neighbors think you killed him, too?”

Coreen felt the nausea in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it down and lifted cool blue eyes to his. She ignored the blatant insult. “We had no close neighbors, nor did we have any close friends. Barry didn’t like people around us.”

His expression tautened as he glared at her. “And you didn’t like Barry around you,” he said with soft venom. “He told me all about you, Coreen. Everything.”

She could imagine the sort of things Barry had confided. He liked having people think she was frigid. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead, where the beginnings of a headache were forming. “Don’t you have a business to run?” she asked heavily. “Several businesses, in fact?”

He crossed one long leg over the other. “My favorite cousin is dead,” he reminded her. “I’m here for the funeral.”

“The funeral is over,” she said pointedly.

“And you’re four million dollars to the good. At least, until the will is read. Tina’s on the way back from the cemetery.”

“Urged on by you, no doubt,” she said.

His eyebrows arched. “I didn’t need to urge her.”

The pain and torment of the past two years ate at her like acid. Her eyes were haunted. “No, of course you didn’t.”

She got up from the sofa, elegant in the expensive black dress that clung to her slender—too slender— body. He didn’t like noticing how drawn she looked. He knew that she hadn’t loved Barry; she certainly wasn’t mourning him.

“Don’t expect much,” he said with a cold smile.

The accusation in his eyes hurt. “I didn’t kill Barry,” she said.

He stood up, too, slowly. “You let him get into a car and drive when he’d had five neat whiskeys.” He nodded at her look of surprise. “I grew up in Jacobsville. I’m acquainted with most people who live here, and you know that Sandy and I have just moved back into the old homestead. Everybody’s been talking about Barry’s death. You were at a party and he wanted you to drive him home. You refused. So he went alone, and shot right off a bridge.”

So that was how the gossips had twisted it. She stared at Ted without speaking. Sandy hadn’t mentioned that they were coming home to Jacobsville. How was she going to survive living in the same town with Ted?

“No defense?” he challenged mockingly. “No excuses?”

“Why bother?” she returned wearily. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“That’s a fact.” He stuck his hands into his pockets, aware of loud noises in the kitchen. Sandy, reminding him that she was still around.

Coreen folded her hands in front of her to keep them from trembling. Did he have to look at her with such cold accusation?

“Barry wrote to me two weeks ago. He said that he’d changed his will and that I was mentioned in it.” He stared at her mockingly. “Didn’t you know?”

She didn’t. She only knew that Barry had changed the will. She knew nothing of what was in it.

“Tina’s in it, too, I imagine,” he continued with a smile so smug that it made her hands curl.

She was tired. Tired of the aftermath of the nightmare she’d been living, tired of his endless prodding. She pushed back her short hair with a heavy sigh. “Go away, Ted,” she said miserably. “Please…”

She was dead on her feet. The ordeal had crushed her spirit. She felt tears threatening and she turned away to hide them, just as their betraying glitter began to show. She caught her toe in the rug and stumbled as she wheeled around. She gasped as she saw the floor coming up to meet her.

Incredibly he moved forward and caught her by the shoulders. He pulled her around and looked into her pale, drawn face. Then without a word, he slid his arms around her and stood holding her, gently, without passion.

“How did you manage that?” he asked, as if he thought she’d done it deliberately.

She hadn’t. She was always tripping over her own feet these days. Tears stung her eyes as she stood rigidly in his hold, her heart breaking. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, how it had been.

“I didn’t manage it,” she whispered in a raw tone. “I tripped, and not because I couldn’t wait to get your arms around me! I don’t need anything from you!”

Her tone made him bristle with bad temper. “Not even my love?” he asked mockingly, at her ear. “You begged for it, once,” he reminded her coldly.

She shivered. The memory, like most others of the past two years, wasn’t that pleasant. She started to step back but his big hands flattened on her shoulder blades and held her against him. She was aware, too aware, of the clean scent of his whipcord lean body, of the rough sigh of his breath, the movement of his broad chest so close that the tips of her breasts almost touched it. Ted, she thought achingly. Ted!

Her hands were clenched against his chest, to keep them honest. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together.

The hands on her back had become reluctantly caressing, and she felt his warm breath at the hair above her temple. He was so tall that she barely came up to his nose.