Dream's End (12 page)

“Oh, Curry, go to her,” she said gently, compassion in the look she gave him. “Don't let pride do this to you. Maybe she's just as lonely as you are, did you think about that?”

He stared at her unseeingly. “Pride doesn't have anything to do with it, Jadebud,” he said softly. “She doesn't love me.”

He said it so simply.
She doesn't love me.
And the pain was in every syllable, in his eyes, his voice, the hardness of his face.

She dropped her own eyes. “I'm sorry.”

He drew a deep breath. “So am I. Don't you want to try and console me, little girl?” he asked. “We could console each other. A night in my bed might make your path a little easier, too. I'd
make damned sure you didn't have any regrets.”

She gazed at him quietly. “Do you think that little of me, after all this time?” she asked him. “Is that all I am now, a body to satisfy a passing urge?”

His eyes traced her body carelessly. “What would you like, a declaration of passionate love and a promise of marriage?”

Her eyes flashed. “Not from you, thanks!”

“Don't worry, I'm not that blind yet!” he flashed back at her, his eyes cruel.

She flinched. “Excuse me,” she said in a choked tone. “I forgot. You've told me so many times how undesirable I am, I shouldn't have had any trouble remembering.” She whirled the chestnut and started back the way she came, whipping the animal into a gallop as she reached the pasture.

Her eyes were misty with tears, and she was leaning over the horse's neck,
wild to get as far away from Curry as quickly as she could, and she didn't see the gopher hole. Neither did the furiously moving animal, until it caught him and threw him, with Eleanor landing underneath.

The last sensation she had was of crushing pain, and then merciful blackness and oblivion.

The first thing she was aware of was the pressure on her chest. Not hard, not crushing, but pressing against her. There was a voice, too, with anguish in it, murmuring words she couldn't understand, whispering things. Hands touched her, caressed her, and always and forever came that deep, husky voice.

Through the mists of pain, her hands reached up, and buried themselves in thick, cool hair. It was a head pressed against her breasts, hands gripping her back while a voice pleaded with her not to leave him. She couldn't understand who would do that, unless it was her friend Jim….

She licked her parched lips and tried to make a sound. “Jim?” she whispered hoarsely. “Jim?”

The head stilled against her, the hands stiffened and bit into her, hurting her soft flesh. Then the warm contact was suddenly gone, and she wondered vaguely if she'd dreamed it all as she dropped back off again.

 

A light burned against her eyes. Little by little she came back to consciousness to see a man in a white coat bending over her with a tiny light in a steel cylinder. When her eyes opened, he stood erect and smiled down at her reassuringly.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She searched herself. “My head hurts,” she murmured. She moved in the crisp confines of the white-sheeted bed. “I'm sore…all over.”

“I'm not surprised. A horse fell on you.” The man, who was obviously a doctor, went out the door and a few seconds later Curry came in. He bent over
her, meeting her curious gaze with stormy, dark eyes.

“Are you all right, honey?” he asked softly. “The doctor says I can take you home now as long as someone stays with you for the rest of the night.”

She nodded. “Please, I'd like to go home…but, Curry, where is home?” she murmured disorientedly.

“Wherever I am, Eleanor.” He brushed the wild, tumbled hair away from her face. “For now, at least. Come on, baby, let's see if you can sit up.”

Bessie was waiting on the porch when Curry carried Eleanor up the steps and into the house.

“Hello, sweet,” she said, patting the young girl's shoulder. “What can I bring up?”

“Some water and ice,” Curry told her. “You'll have to get her into a gown for me.”

“I'll get right to it.”

Curry climbed the stairs, holding her
close against his taut body, and she leaned back against his broad chest and watched him every step of the way, her eyes quiet and loving.

He looked down into them once and quickly looked away.

“Jim? Will you call him?” she asked.

His jaw clenched. “I already have. I told him I'd take care of you, and he asked me to keep him posted. He's not coming over, if that's what you hoped,” he added gruffly.

“I wouldn't expect him to,” Eleanor said gently. “Curry, I'm sorry I was so stupid….”

“I drove you to it,” he said wearily. “I've done nothing but hurt you for weeks.”

She traced a pattern on his shirt with a sharp nail. “It doesn't matter.”

“Norie, don't touch me like that,” he said in a haunted tone, and she noticed that his breath was suddenly ragged. She looked up in time to see the flash of de
sire that darkened his eyes as they glanced into hers.

Her lips parted with the strange hungers she was feeling, the dazed condition of her mind making her careless, reckless, as the nearness of him worked on her.

“Like what, Curry?” she whispered, letting her hand slide inside his shirt against the blazing rough warmth of his chest, tangling her fingers in the mat of hair.

A shudder went through him and he crushed her in his arms, bruising her against his body as he went through the doorway to her bedroom and all but threw her onto the bed. He stood over her, breathing harshly, looking down at her with eyes that made her hungry.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked harshly.

She turned her face away from the accusation in his and buried it in the cool pillow. Her head hurt, her heart felt as if it had been blown into splinters.

“I don't know,” she whispered shakenly. “I…I wanted to touch you….”

“You took a pretty hard blow on the head,” he said tightly. “You've had a mild concussion, baby, it makes you do things you wouldn't normally do.”

“That's so,” she managed shakily. “I'd never beg you to make love to me if I was myself.”

There was a long, static pause. “Is that what you wanted?”

She nodded, her fingers gripping the pillow like a lifeline.

“So that you could pretend I was Jim Black?” he asked bitterly.

“I know who you are, Curry,” she told the pillow. She swallowed. “Don't mind me, I'm crazy, isn't that what the doctor told you? Out of my mind with a concussion, and loony. You'd better go before I get up and try to tear your clothes off.”

He chuckled softly. “Baby, I'd let you,” he said gently. “Any time, any
place. But I think it might be better if you healed a little more first, because you're too weak right now for what would happen next.”

She barely heard him. Her dizzy mind was whirling right away from her, and the last thing she heard was the sound of her name being whispered very close to her ear.

 

She woke up the next morning feeling like a new woman, with no sign of headache, no other symptoms of the concussion she'd suffered.

Her eyes swept the room and found an ashtray beside her bed with a number of cigarette butts in it. She frowned. Only Curry could have done it, but why would he have been sitting by her bed?

The door opened while she sat there puzzling, and she turned her head and looked straight into Curry's amused eyes. He had a mug of coffee in his hand, which he set beside the bed, his eyes trac
ing the soft lines of her body which were visible through the thin nylon gown.

She followed the direction of his eyes and suddenly jerked the sheet up to her throat with red cheeks.

“Isn't it a little late for that?” he murmured. “I sat here and watched you for the better part of the night. You're very restless in your sleep, little one.”

The gown was a little large, and the straps had a disconcerting habit of slipping off even when she was awake. Asleep…she met his teasing gaze and realized that he'd seen a lot more than the gown. The blush travelled down to her neck.

He chuckled softly. “You're lovely to look at, Jadebud,” he said. “All pink and soft…”

“Curry…” she began irritably.

He laid a long, brown finger across her lips. “Don't start any fights with me this morning. Last night's too fresh in my memory.”

“Last night?” she asked curiously.

One dark eyebrow went up. “Don't you remember what happened?”

She thought for a minute and shook her head. “It's all hazy. What did I do?”

“You tried to undress me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Then you begged me to make love to you.”

She gasped in horror. “I didn't!”

“Oh, but you did.” His eyes smiled at her. “I've never been more tempted to let a woman have her way with me,” he added.

“I wouldn't have!” she breathed.

He caught a strand of her hair and tugged on it gently as he sat down on the bed beside her. “You really don't remember?” he probed.

“Honestly, I don't.” She saw the humor die out of his eyes, to be replaced by something dark and quiet and intriguing. “Curry, did I really do that?” she asked.

“You wanted it, all right,” he said solemnly. “God, so did I, but I'm not such
a monster that I'd take advantage of a woman with a concussion.”

“But then you didn't really want me, did you?” she asked unsteadily, her eyes on the sheet. “You've told me so often enough.”

He caught her chin and tilted her face up to his. His eyes were dark and quiet. “Haven't you ever heard of camouflage?”

She shrugged. “I suppose.”

“I've wanted you for a long time. You can't know how it's been with me these past few weeks.” His finger touched her mouth, traced it. “Do you remember that first night you came down the stairs with your hair down and your glasses off—when we'd had the blowup? I stood there and looked at you, and I felt a kind of hunger I never knew I was capable of feeling. But that was just the beginning. It got worse.”

Her eyes dropped to his chest. “You felt that way about Amanda,” she reminded him.

“No, Norie,” he corrected her. “Not after that. Not at all. The night I came home from Houston, when she'd tried her seduction act—I never told you the real reason I walked away from her. It was because I wanted you, and no other woman,” he said, meeting her gaze levelly.

Her face mirrored the astonishment she was feeling.

“Curry, I don't understand,” she breathed.

“Don't you? And all the time I thought you were eating your heart out for Jim Black. I wanted to break his neck. He could get close to you, and I couldn't. At least, not until the night the bull gored me,” he said with a smile. “The first time I kissed you on the porch, I thought he'd been giving you lessons, and when I found out that you were untouched…I had nightmares about what might happen to you with him. The night after I got hurt, I wanted so much to teach you all
the things a woman needs to know with a man…I damned near let it go too far. After that, it was a losing battle to keep my hands to myself. When I lapsed, and I did, I took it out on you because I couldn't let you see how much power you had over me.”

“Me?” she asked incredulously.

“Last night,” he said quietly, “you did this…” He unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, and taking her hand, slid it inside the opening against the moist, bronzed flesh of his body. “It was the first time you ever touched me of your own free will, and you could see the effect it had on me. You wanted me, Eleanor.”

She looked deep into his silver eyes, and it all came back. She remembered how she'd felt, what she'd done….

Her fingers moved on his broad chest, touching, loving, exploring.

“I don't want to fight you anymore,” she said in a soft, yielding tone.

“What do you want, honey?” he asked gently.

“To love you,” she said simply, “for as long as you'll let me.”

His eyes searched her flushed face. “Love, in the physical sense or in a deeper sense, Eleanor?”

“Both,” she admitted, letting go of her pride as a child might let go of a helium-filled balloon and watch it sail away.

“And if I took you up on that?” he murmured. “If I asked you to come into my bedroom with me, right now, and lock the door?”

She bit her lower lip hard. “I…I'd go,” she said, swallowing nervously.

His eyes closed for an instant, as if in relief. “Are you telling me that you love me, Eleanor?”

Tears misted in her eyes. “Didn't you know, Curry?” she asked brokenly. “For three long years!”

He gathered her into his hard arms and crushed her against him, his face buried
in the thick, soft hair at her throat. His arms trembled as they contracted around her softness.