Diana Palmer Christmas Collection: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means / True Blue / Carrera's Bride / Will of Steel / Winter Roses

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.”