He smiled softly. “We’re sharing our deepest secrets. I suppose I might as well. We have a fifth brother. His name is Simon.”
“You mentioned him the first time you came over, with that bouquet.”
He nodded. “He’s in San Antonio. Just after you left town, he was in a wreck and afterward, in a coma. We couldn’t all go back, and leave the ranch to itself. So I went. It was several weeks before I could leave him. By the time I got back, you weren’t living with Belinda anymore and I couldn’t make her tell me where you were. Soon after that, your father came down on my head like a brick and I lost heart.”
“You called Belinda?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to find me?”
He searched her eyes quietly. “I wanted to know that you were safe, that I hadn’t hurt you too badly. At least I found that much out. I didn’t hope for more.”
She traced his eyebrows, lost in the sudden intimacy. “I dreamed about you,” she said. “But every time, you’d come toward me and I’d wake up.”
He traced the artery in her throat down to her collarbone. “My dreams were a bit more erotic.” His eyes darkened. “I had you in ways and places you can’t imagine, each more heated than the one before. I couldn’t wait to go to bed, so that I could have you again.”
She blushed. “At first, you mean, just after I left.”
His hand smoothed onto her throat. “For eight years. Every night of my life.”
She caught her breath. She could hardly get it at all. His eyes were glittering with feeling. “All that time?”
He nodded. He looked at her soft throat where the blouse had parted, and his face hardened. His fingers trailed lightly down onto her bodice, onto her breast. “I haven’t touched a woman since you left Jacobsville,” he said huskily. “I haven’t been a man since then.”
Her wide eyes filled with tears. She had a good idea of what it would be like for a man like Corrigan to be incapable with a woman. “Was it because we fought, at the last?”
“It was because we made love,” he whispered. “Have you forgotten what we did?”
She averted her eyes, hiding them in embarrassment.
“You left a virgin,” he said quietly, “but only technically. We had each other in your bed,” he reminded her, “naked in each other’s arms. We did everything except go those last few aching inches. Your body was almost open to me, I was against you, we were moving together…and you cried out when you felt me there. You squirmed out from under me and ran.”
“I was so afraid,” she whispered shamefully. “It hurt, and I kept remembering what I’d been told…”
“It wouldn’t have hurt for long,” he said gently. “And it wouldn’t have been traumatic, not for you. But you didn’t know that, and I was too excited to coax you. I lost my temper instead of reassuring you. And we spent so many years apart, suffering for it.”
She laid her hot cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to remember how far we went,” she said through a mist. “I hurt you terribly when I drew back…”
“Not that much,” he said. “We’d made love in so many ways already that I wasn’t that hungry.” He smoothed her soft hair. “I wanted an excuse to make you leave.”
“Why?”
His lips touched her hair. “Because I wanted to make you pregnant,” he whispered, feeling her body jump as he said it. “And it scared me to death. You see, modern women don’t want babies, because they’re a trap. My mother taught me that.”
“That’s not true!” She pressed closer. “I would have loved having a baby, and I’d never have felt trapped!” she said, her voice husky with feeling. Especially your baby, she added silently. “I didn’t know any of your background, especially anything about your mother. You never told me.”
His chest rose and fell abruptly. “I couldn’t. You scared me to death. Maybe I deliberately upset you, to make you run. But when I got what I thought I wanted, I didn’t want it. It hurt when you wouldn’t even look at me, at the bus stop. I guess I’d shamed you so badly that you couldn’t.” He sighed. “I thought you were modern, that we’d enjoy each other and that would be the end of it. I got the shock of my life that last night. I couldn’t even deal with it. I lost my head.”
She lifted her face and looked into his eyes. “You were honest about it. You’d already said that you wanted no part of marriage or a family, that all you could offer me was a night in your arms with no strings attached. But I couldn’t manage to stop, or stop you, until the very last. I was raised to think of sleeping around as a sin.”
His face contorted. He averted his eyes to keep her from seeing the pain in them. “I didn’t know that until it was much too late. Sometimes, you don’t realize how much things mean to you until you lose them.”
His fingers moved gently in her hair while she stood quietly, breathing uneasily. “It wasn’t just our mother who soured us on women. Simon was married,” he said after a minute. “He was the only one of us who ever was. His wife got pregnant the first time they were together, but she didn’t want a child. She didn’t really want Simon, she just wanted to be rich. He was crazy about her.” He sighed painfully. “She had an abortion and he found out later, accidentally. They had a fight on the way home from one of her incessant parties. He wrecked the car, she died and he lost an arm. That’s why he doesn’t live on the ranch. He can’t do the things he used to do. He’s embittered and he’s withdrawn from the rest of us.” He laughed a little. “You think the four of us hate women. You should see Simon.”
She stirred in his arms. “Poor man. He must have loved her very much.”
“Too much. That’s another common problem we seem to have. We love irrationally and obsessively.”
“And reluctantly,” she guessed.
He laughed. “And that.”
He let her go with a long sigh and stared down at her warmly. “I suppose I’d better take you home. If you’re still here when the boys get back, they’ll tie you to the stove.”
She smiled. “I like your brothers.” She hesitated. “Corrigan, they aren’t really going to try to force you to marry me, are they?”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “They’re only teasing.”
“Okay.”
It was a good thing, he thought, that she couldn’t see his fingers crossed behind his back.
He took her home, pausing to kiss her gently at the front door.
“I’ll be along tomorrow night,” he said softly. “We’ll go to a movie. There’s a new one every Saturday night at the Roxy downtown.”
She searched his eyes and tried to decide if he was doing this because he wanted to or because his brothers were pestering him.
He smiled. “Don’t worry so much. You’re home, it’s going to be Christmas, you have a job and plenty of friends. It’s going to be the best Christmas you’ve ever had.”
She smiled back. “Maybe it will be,” she said, catching some of his own excitement. Her gaze caressed his face. They were much more like friends, with all the dark secrets out in the open. But his kisses had made her too hungry for him. She needed time to get her emotions under control. Perhaps a day would do it. He was throwing out broad hints of some sort, but he hadn’t spoken one word of love. In that respect,