Renegade (4 page)

“It's a half life.”

“So is yours,” she accused, looking up at him.

“I have an even better reason than yours,” he said coldly.

“But you won't share it,” she guessed. “You don't trust me enough.”

He rammed his hands into his slacks pockets and glared down at her. “I was married once, years ago. I was in love for the first time in my life and crazy to share everything with my wife. She'd just told me she was pregnant. I was over the moon. I wanted to tell her all about my life before I married her.” His eyes grew cold. “So I did. She sat and listened. She was very calm. She didn't say a word. She just listened, as if she understood. She was a little pale, but that wasn't surprising. I did horrible things in my line of work. Really terrible.” He turned away from her. “I had to go out of town on business for a few days. She saw me off very naturally, no fuss. I came back with little presents for her and some thing for the baby, even though she was only a few weeks along. She met me at the door with her suit cases.”

He leaned forward against the banister. He didn't look at her while he spoke. “She told me that she'd gone to a clinic while I was away. She'd seen a lawyer, too. Just before she walked out the door, she told me that she wasn't bringing the child of a cold-blooded killer into the world.”

Tippy had thought there was something traumatic in his past, besides his work. Now she understood what it was. The hunger he displayed for Judd and Christabel's twins made sense now. She could almost feel his pain, as if it were her own. She was deeply flattered that he trusted her with something so intimate.

“No comment?” he drawled poisonously, without looking down at her.

“Was she very young?” she asked softly.

“She was my age.”

She lowered her eyes to his hands on the steel rail. He wasn't
showing any emotion at all, but his knuckles were white from the pressure he was exerting on the bar.

“I won't step on an insect if I can avoid it,” she said quietly. “I would never be able to sleep with a man without using protection unless I loved him. I think a child is part of that.”

His head turned slowly and he looked down at her curiously. “She was right. I was a cold-blooded killer,” he said flatly.

She searched his hard face and her eyes were soft and tender. “I don't believe that.”

He scowled. “I beg your pardon?”

“Rory's commandant told him that you were part of a crack military unit in special ops,” she said. “You were sent in when negotiations failed, when lives were at stake. So don't try to convince me that you were a hit man for the mob, or that you killed for money. You aren't that sort of person.”

He didn't seem to be breathing. “You know nothing about me,” he said abruptly.

“My grandmother was Irish. She had the second sight. It's a gift. All the women in my family have it, except for my mother,” she added. Her eyes softened on his face. “I know things that I shouldn't know. I feel things before they happen. I've been very worried about Rory lately, because I sense something dangerous connected to him.”

“I don't believe in clairvoyance,” he said stiffly. “It's a myth.”

“Maybe it is to you. It isn't to me.” She glanced around the room, looking for her little brother and picking him out of a crowd looking up at a stuffed coelacanth suspended from the high ceiling of the room.

Cash felt violated. He felt as if he'd become trans parent with this woman, and he didn't like it. He kept to himself, he kept secrets. He didn't want Tippy walking around inside his brain.

“Now I've made you angry. I'm sorry,” she said gently, without looking at him. “I'm going to the Einstein shop. Rory wants a T-shirt. I'll meet you both in the lobby in an hour or so.”

He caught her hand and tugged her back to him. “No, you won't. We'll go together.” He tipped her chin up so that he could see her eyes. “I told Rory once that I value honesty.”

“No, you don't, not if it concerns having anyone else guess about your private life.”

“I told you about my private life,” he replied. He took a slow breath. “I've never told anyone else about my child.”

“I have that kind of face,” she said with a tender smile.

“Yes, you do.” He touched her cheek lightly. “I've got more emotional scars than you have, and that's saying something. We're both damaged people. That being the case, it would be insane of us to get involved with one another. So that's not going to happen.”

Her eyes became shy, curious. “You would… You've thought about…getting involved with me?” She asked the question as if she didn't believe what she'd heard.

That it flattered her was obvious. He was surprised. He hadn't thought she felt attracted to him. It would be difficult for her, with her past.

“With your past…” he murmured aloud.

She moved a step closer to him. It made her breathless. “You're forgetting something. You're a cop.”

“And that's why you're not afraid of me?” he murmured. He was feeling a little breathless himself at her proximity. She smelled like flowers.

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 con
tinued, 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.”