Tears of the Renegade Read online

  “I’m sorry,” she heard herself say in swift apology, and she scrambled off the bed, abandoning the flimsy barrier of the sheet in favor of dressing as quickly as she could. Without looking at him, she grabbed up her panties and stepped into them. “I didn’t mean to push you. I realize that having sex doesn’t mean anything—”

  “Whoa, lady!” Scowling, he dropped his jeans to the floor and grabbed her arm, pulling her upright as she bent to retrieve her dress, then drawing her into the circle of his arms. Her soft breasts flattened against his chest, and she quivered with enjoyment, her thoughts instantly distracted. How could she want him again? Her legs were distinctly wobbly after the day’s activities anyway, and she was already feeling achy in various places, but she knew that if he wanted to tumble her back on the bed again, she would tumble gladly and worry about her aches tomorrow.

  He frowned down at her. “Don’t try feeding me that free-and-easy hogwash, because that isn’t you, and I know it. I’m just feeling uneasy. Things are getting complicated all of a sudden.” He stopped without explaining any further and cupped her face in his warm fingers. “Are you sorry it happened?”

  She put her hand over his, rubbing her cheek against his palm. “No, I’m not sorry. How could I be? I…I wanted it, too.” She’d started to say, “I love you,” but at the last moment she’d choked the words back and substituted others that were true, but lacked the depth of what she felt. He didn’t want the words, didn’t want to be burdened with her emotions, and she knew it. As long as she didn’t say the words aloud, he’d be able to ignore the true depth of her feeling, even though he had to know how she felt after these past hours spent in his arms, when she had given herself to him completely in a way that only a woman in love could give. He had to know, yet until the words were spoken, the knowledge didn’t exist.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he muttered.

  She leaned against him, wrapping her arms around him. He was warning her, letting her know that she shouldn’t expect anything permanent from him. Pierced by a stiletto pain at the thought of one day watching his back as he walked away, she was also grateful for his honesty. He wasn’t going to hit her with a blow from behind. And maybe, just maybe, she could change his mind. He wasn’t used to being loved, and it was obvious that, even unwillingly, he felt more for her than he was comfortable with. She had a chance, and she would risk everything on that.

  “Everyone gets hurt,” she murmured against his warm skin. “I’m not going to worry about what might or might not happen someday in the future. I’ll worry about someday when it gets here.”

  Someday she might have to do without him, a little bit of her dying every day of emotional starvation. But that was someday, and she had today. Today she was in his arms, and that was enough.

  Later that night, facing Imogene across the width of the kitchen, she tried desperately to hold on to the memory of what she’d shared with him. Imogene’s first words to her had been of concern, but that had quickly faded when Susan told her flatly that she wasn’t going to play spy. “I told him what your plan was,” she confessed remotely. “Then I told him to make certain he didn’t tell me anything, so he couldn’t think I was with him just to whore for information.”

  Imogene whitened with fury. She drew herself up to her full height, her anger making her seem six feet tall, Imogene in a rage was a formidable sight, but Susan stood her ground, her soft mouth set in a grim line, giving back stare for stare.

  “Susan, my God, are you a fool?” Imogene shouted. “Haven’t you realized yet that we stand to lose everything?”

  “No, I haven’t realized it! Cord hasn’t made any move at all, other than threatening to press charges if the ridges aren’t leased to him. I’ve agreed to that, and he’s waiting for the geological surveys. Stop painting him as the devil, Imogene!”

  “You don’t know him like I do!” Suddenly Imogene realized that she was yelling, and she drew a deep breath, visibly forcing herself back under control. “You’re making a big mistake if you take him at face value. He’s planning something; I know it. If I just had some inkling, so I’d know what to protect! You could have found out,” she said bitterly. “But instead you’ve let him turn your head and make you forget about where your loyalty lies.”

  “I love him,” Susan said quietly.

  Imogene gaped at her, her eyes going wide. “You…what? But what about Preston? I thought—”

  “I do love Preston, as a friend, as Vance’s brother.” Susan groped for the words that could explain. “But Cord…makes me feel alive again. He gives me something to live for.”

  “I hope you’re not banking too much on that! Susan, where’s your common sense? He’ll willingly take you to bed, but if you expect more from him than that, you’re a fool. When he gets tired of you, he’ll drop you without thinking twice about it, and you’ll be left to face everyone you know. You’ll always be Cord’s leftovers.”

  “If I’d gone along with your plan, I would have been, anyway,” Susan pointed out. “I won’t stab him in the back, even if it means I lose everything I own, but I don’t think he means to do anything else at all. I think all he wanted was the oil leases.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s involved here! You’re not the only one who’s at risk. Preston and I also stand to lose everything. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “It means a great deal to me. I simply don’t think he’s a threat to you.”

  Imogene shook her head, closing her eyes as if in disbelief at Susan’s blindness. “I can’t believe you’re so blind where he’s concerned. You love him? Well, that’s just fine! Love him if you have to, but don’t be fool enough to trust him!”

  Susan went white. “I have to trust him. I love him too much not to. I’d trust him with my life.”

  “That’s your decision, I suppose,” Imogene snapped sarcastically. “But you’re also trusting him with ours, and I don’t like that at all. He must really be something in bed, to make you so willing to turn your back on the people who love you, knowing that all he’ll every offer you is sex.”

  Susan felt as if she were staring at Imogene from a great distance, and a faint buzzing sound in her head warned her that she might faint. Dizzily, she groped for one of the kitchen chairs and almost fell into it. They were tearing her apart! The awful thing was that she could see Imogene’s side of it. Imogene fully expected Cord to take some sort of revenge against her, and she was frightened, as well she should be. Imogene was lashing out, reacting to a driving need to protect her own, and in her desperation she was willing to hurt people if they got in her way.

  Imogene hesitated for a moment, staring at Susan’s pale, damp face as she slumped in the chair; then her face twisted, and for a moment tears brimmed in her pale gray eyes. She blinked them back fiercely, because Imogene Blackstone never wept, and moved swiftly to the sink, dampening several paper towels and taking them to Susan. She slid her arm around the young woman and gently blotted her face with the cool, wet towels. “Susan, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice steady at first, then wobbling dangerously. Imogene never apologized. “My God, he’s got us fighting among ourselves.”

  The damp coolness of the paper towels banished Susan’s momentary dizziness, but it couldn’t banish the ache in her heart. She wanted to run to Cord, to throw herself into his arms and let his kisses make her forget that there was an outside world. But despite the hours she’d spent in his bed, she wasn’t entitled to dump all her worries on his shoulders, even though all her worries centered around him.

  She clasped her hands on the table, entwining her fingers so tightly that they turned white. “I haven’t turned my back on you or Preston,” she said with hard-won steadiness. “I simply can’t do something that’s so completely against the things I believe in. Please don’t try to make me take sides, because I can’t. I love all of you; I can’t stab any of you in the back.”

  Imogene touched Susan’s bent head briefly, then let her hand