Tears of the Renegade Read online

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re choosing him over me?”

  “No. But I think you’re wrong in what you’re trying to do, and if you won’t stop, then I have to help him fight you.”

  Black fury gathered in him, sparking out of his pale eyes, but he held it in. “Is it asking too much for you to trust me in this?” he rasped, watching her carefully.

  “The same way you trust me?” she shot back. “You told me yourself, just a moment ago, that you’re trying to bankrupt us! Is that supposed to reassure me?”

  He gave a derisive snort, the fire in his eyes turning to ice. “I should’ve known! You spouted that garbage about loving me, then you asked me so sweetly to ease up on Preston. You’re good in the sack, baby, the best I’ve had, but you don’t have that kind of a hold on me.”

  “I know,” she whispered blankly. “I’ve always known that. But I wasn’t trying for any emotional blackmail. I think…I think you’d better go.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  As he moved past her, she blinked at him with eyes suddenly blurred by a film of tears. He was going, and she knew he wouldn’t be back. “Goodbye,” she choked, feeling herself shatter inside.

  He gave her a grim look. “It’s not goodbye, not yet. You’ll be seeing me around, though you’ll wish you weren’t.” Then he was gone, lightly taking the stairs with graceful bounds. Slowly she followed him, and she reached the door in time to watch the red flare of the Blazer’s taillights disappear as he rounded a curve. She shut the door and locked it, then methodically moved about and made certain the house was secure for the night. She even sat down and watched the late movie until it went off, then realized that she hadn’t absorbed any of it. She didn’t even know the name of it, or the names of the actors. She hadn’t been thinking of anything, just sitting there, her mind numb. She wanted it to stay numb, because she knew that when the numbness wore off, she was going to hurt more than she could bear.

  She went through the motions of going to bed; she showered and put on her nightgown, moisturized her face, neatened up her bedroom and put her discarded clothing in the laundry basket. Then she lay in bed until dawn, her eyes open and staring at the ceiling. He was gone.

  He was gone! It was a litany of pain that echoed through her endlessly, an inner accompaniment to the gray, dreary days that followed. The sun could have been shining; she simply didn’t know. But she couldn’t see any sunshine, and she functioned only through instinct and sheer grim determination. She’d kept going after Vance’s death, and now the same steely determination kept her upright even when she wanted nothing more than to collapse in a corner of her bedroom and not ever come out again.

  She’d had to accept the bleak truth of Vance’s death because she had seen his lifeless body, had buried him. It was worse with Cord. He was gone from her, yet he seemed to be everywhere. They met at several functions, and she had to act as if it didn’t almost double her over with pain to see him. He was usually with Cheryl, of course, though she heard that he wasn’t limiting himself to the other woman. She had to see him, had to listen to him say all the polite things while his icy eyes cut her, had to watch him slide his arm about Cheryl’s waist, had to imagine him kissing the other woman, touching her with his hot, magic fingers, drawing her beneath him in his big bed at the cabin.

  To stay sane she drove herself at work every day, working longer and longer hours, working frantically with Preston in an effort to raise enough cash to pay off the loan without seriously weakening the corporation. It was an impossible task; they both knew that if Cord chose to attack them again, they wouldn’t be able to meet his demands.

  Quietly, without letting Preston know, Susan sold some prime property in New Orleans that Vance had left her and added the proceeds to their cash fund. Preston would have died rather than let her sell off any of her personal property, though she knew he’d been heavily liquidating his. Sometimes, when she thought about the fact that Cord was deliberately forcing them to sell off land that had been in the family for generations, she hated him, but always that hate was mingled with love. If she hadn’t loved him so much, she wouldn’t have felt so betrayed by his actions, wouldn’t have been so deeply angry when she saw Preston, without complaint, destitute himself personally in order to keep the corporation out of bankruptcy.

  This had shaken Imogene, too, to the very basis of her foundations. Since the night she and Susan had argued so violently, she had been a little quieter, as if some of the spirit had gone out of her. Perhaps she had sensed then that she couldn’t fight Cord, that by the very act of returning he had won. Always before, Imogene had been actively involved in any corporate decisions, but now she let Preston and Susan carry the weight. For the first time she was showing her age.

  At last it was done. They had enough to cover the loan, and though Susan and Preston shared a moment of relief, it wasn’t without worry. They had used every ounce of spare reserve they had, and another blow would be too much. Still, the relief was strong enough that they celebrated in the French Quarter that night, in a far noisier restaurant than the one Cord had taken her to. But she was glad of the noise and distraction, and for once she ate a good meal. In the time since Cord had sauntered out of her house she’d lost several pounds that she hadn’t been able to spare. It was as much overwork as depression, or so she told herself every morning when she frowningly examined herself in the mirror, noting that her clothing was too loose to fall correctly on her increasingly slender body.

  On the drive home Preston startled her by apologizing. “You’ve broken up with Cord because of this, haven’t you?”

  There was no denying it, no use in concocting a lame excuse that they simply hadn’t gotten along, so she simply murmured, “Yes,” and let it go at that.

  “I’m sorry.” He cast her a frustrated glance. “I should be glad, because I didn’t like you being with him, but I’m sorry that you’ve been hurt. I didn’t want you in the middle like this.”

  “I made my decision. He insisted that I choose sides, and I simply couldn’t watch him cost a lot of people their jobs without trying to do something about it.”

  “I hope he knows what he’s lost,” Preston said violently, and returned his attention to his driving.

  Even if he knew, he wouldn’t care, Susan thought dully. He certainly wasn’t pining away for her; he looked better every time she saw him, his hard, dark face becoming darker as the late-spring sun continued to bronze him. Had he finished clearing off the land down by the creek? Was he doing any more work on the cabin?

  When he had pushed her out of his life, he had left her lost and desolate, without any emotional focus. She wondered if the rest of her life would be like this, a dull misery to be endured as she went through the motions of living.

  Chapter Ten

  If she had known what awaited her when she walked into the office three days later, she would never have gone. Beryl was already there and had a fragrant pot of coffee brewing. “Good morning, Beryl. Is Mr. Blackstone in yet?”

  “No, not yet. Do you want a cup of coffee now?”

  Susan smiled at the young woman. “I’ll get it. You look like you have enough to handle right now,” she teased, nodding at the stacks of paperwork that littered Beryl’s desk.

  Beryl nodded ruefully. “Don’t I, though? Mr. Blackstone must have worked until midnight last night. He left all of this, and enough tapes on the Dictaphone to keep me typing through the weekend.”

  “Really? I didn’t know he’d planned to come back to the office last night. He left when I did, and I can’t think of anything that would have been so urgent.”

  She poured herself some coffee and carefully balanced the cup as she went into her office, keeping a cautious eye on the sloshing liquid. She placed the cup on her desk and walked around to pull the curtains open, letting the brilliant morning sunlight pour into the room. The day was hot already, with a sultry feel to it that had dampened the back of her neck with perspiration even before she’