Renegade

One perfect shoulder lifted nervously. “Judd Dunn was a Texas Ranger. I felt safe with him.”

“Are you making a point?”

She nibbled her lower lip and her high cheekbones flushed a little. “I don’t feel…safe…with you, exactly. You stir me up inside. I feel…shaky. I feel swollen all over. I think about touching you, all the time. I keep wondering,” she whispered while they were briefly isolated from the other visitors, “how it would feel if you kissed me.”

He couldn’t believe she’d said that. But her eyes were saying it, too. She seemed almost dazed.

His lean hands contracted a little roughly, pulling her up closer to the long, heated, muscular length of his fit body. He felt her breath catch. His dark eyes dropped to her full lips. “I think about touching you, too, Tippy,” he said deep in his throat. His thumbs edged out under her arms, tracing just at the curve of her full breasts. His mouth hovered inches from hers. His breath was warm, minty. “I think about the silky feel of your skin against my chest. I think about breaking your mouth open under mine and tasting you, inside, with my tongue.”

Tippy gasped. Her body trembling. She leaned her forehead against his chest while she tried to breathe normally. Her nails bit into his chest. “Cash,” she groaned.

His thumbs became insistent. Desire coursed through him like a great flood. He felt himself going rigid, losing control. He thought about stepping back, but her hips moved just faintly and he shuddered at the lash of pleasure he felt.

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

“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.”

“And so modest,” she teased.

“A man with my skills can do without modesty,” he murmured wickedly.

She wouldn’t admit it, but the prospect made her utterly breathless. He saw that in her face. The smile grew broader.

THEY HAD LUNCH in a Japanese restaurant, where Tippy and Rory were fascinated to hear Cash converse fluently with the waiter. He was competent with chopsticks, too.

“I didn’t know you spoke Japanese,” Tippy ex claimed. “Have you been to Japan?”

“Several times,” he replied, lifting a piece of chicken to his mouth with the chopsticks. “I love it there.”

“Do you speak any other languages, Cash?” Rory wanted to know.

“About six, I think,” he replied lazily. He smiled at the boy’s fascination. “If you ever want to get into intelligence work, languages will get you further than a law degree.”

“No, you don’t,” Tippy told Rory when he started to open his mouth. “You’re going to get a nice job as a computer technician and get married and have a family.”

Rory glared at her. “I’ll get married when you do.”

Cash chuckled.

“Better yet,” Rory added, “I’ll get married when he does,” and he pointed to Cash.

“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Cash advised Tippy.

“Neither would I,” she had to admit.

He glanced at her curiously, but he didn’t smile. In fact, he was feeling sensations he’d never experienced in his life, and getting a vicious case of cold feet. This woman made him want things, need things, that he feared more than bullets. He ached to take her to bed, and it was becoming obvious that she would let him. It was a prospect that made his head swim. He could al most picture having that perfect body under his on crisp sheets, feeling her long legs curling around him, her full lips clinging to his mouth. She knew nothing about consensual sex, she’d said, but he could teach her. He had plenty of experience, plenty of skill, and he could introduce her to a veritable feast of physical pleasure. In fact, he was dying to do just that. Could she see it? Did she know?

Her eyes were full of delight in his company. She might be second cousin to a virgin, but she certainly had the intelligence to see desire in a man’s face, as well as in his body. Of course she knew. He felt trapped.

He forced himself not to look at her while he tried to decide what to do next. Coming to New York, he told himself angrily, had been a bad idea. He needed to get out, while there was still time.

HIS CHANGE OF ATTITUDE was all too evident to Tippy, who was suddenly very sensitive to nuances of expression in his hard, lean face.

She withdrew as well. She was polite and cheerful, but the same distance that was in Cash now was also in her.

They went back up to her apartment, where a boy about Rory’s age was standing at the door, ringing the bell impatiently. He turned at the approach of the others.

“Hey, Rory! Mom says she’ll take us to see that new fantasy flick, and you can spend the night!” He glanced at Tippy and Cash and grimaced. “I guess you won’t want to, though, since you’ve got company…”

“Oh, Cash isn’t company, Don, he’s family,” Rory said without hesitation, completely unaware of the expression on Cash’s face. “I’d love to go! Can I, sis?”

Don Hartley and his family lived next door, and they knew about Tippy’s troubles with her mother. They’d never let Rory out of their sight.

She hesitated. “Well…” she began.

“I’ll bet Cash is dying to take you out somewhere fancy, just the two of you,” Rory prompted. “And you won’t even have to bribe me!”

Cash burst out laughing. “We could go to the ballet,” he said. “I, uh, have tickets. I didn’t know if you’d want to go…”

“I love ballet,” she said huskily. “I wanted to study it when I was a child, but…I never had the opportunity.” She looked back at Don. “Okay, he can go. Just until breakfast, though. I won’t get to have him around for very long, because we start shooting again the day after New Year’s.”

“You’re joking!” Cash exclaimed.

“I’m not. The producer told us that his director has to start shooting a new film in Europe in March, so he’s in a hurry to get this one in the can.” She sighed.

“You’ll get bruised even more,” Rory groaned.

She shrugged. “What can I say?” she asked, and then grinned. “I’m a star!”

RORY PACKED an overnight bag and went next door. Cash returned to his hotel to change into a suit, while Tippy went grasping through her entire wardrobe looking for just the right dress. She’d only found it when Cash was at the door again.

She caught her breath at the sight of him in evening clothes, with a spotless white shirt and black tie, finely creased trousers and shoes so polished that they reflected the ceiling. His hair was loose at his neck, slightly wavy and jet-black. He looked devastatingly handsome.

“You’re going in a housecoat, then?” he asked, nod ding.

She pulled it closer. “I was looking for the right dress.”

He checked his watch. “You’ve got five minutes to find it,” he pointed out. “I have reservations at the Bull and Bear for six o’clock.”

Her jaw fell. “That’s one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city…”

“At the Waldorf-Astoria,” he added for her. “I know. The ballet starts at eight. I’m ready. If you’re not going in that—” he indicated the ankle-length blue housecoat “—you’d better get cracking.”

She left a vapor trail getting into her bedroom.

She wore an off-the-shoulder white velvet dress with a black bow, and topped it with a black velvet coat with a white lining. She left her hair long and used the faintest trace of makeup. She put on diamond earrings and a diamond necklace and bracelet. Without looking again in the mirror, she went out to join Cash.

He was browsing through her bookshelf when he heard the door open. He turned, and his face froze.

She felt suddenly insecure. “Should I wear some thing else?” she asked nervously.

He just looked at her, his dark eyes narrow and quiet. “I saw a painting in a gallery once,” he murmured, moving toward her slowly. “Of a fairy dancing in the moon light, laughing. You look like her.”

“Was she wearing a velvet coat, then?” she asked facetiously.

“I’m not joking.” He framed her face in his big hands. “I thought she was the most seductive creature I’d ever seen until right now.” His eyes fell to her soft mouth. “You take my breath away…!”

His hard lips settled on her mouth, slowly, gently, so that he didn’t frighten her. He drew her against him lazily, not forcefully, and his lips toyed with hers until he felt her tense body relax, until he felt her lips slacken. She took a jerky breath and slowly settled close against his hard chest. Her hands slid up to the nape of his strong neck. He could feel their coldness against his skin.