Her violet-blue eyes widened with even more fear. Why?
“I just meant that as a mother, you shouldn’t take unnecessary risks—like swimming here alone.”
“My son is no concern of yours!” Her voice was high and thin. “You made that very clear—”
“When did we ever discuss your son?”
“What?” She seemed to catch herself. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I saw your signs. It’s just that I’m upset because you startled me. I shouldn’t have gotten in the water without a buddy. If you’ll just leave, I’ll get out, dress and go. Like I said.” She had begun to shiver, and her lips were blue.
“You can swim as long as you like…now that I’m here to watch over you.”
“I don’t want you here watching over me.” Her teeth were chattering.
“Right.” He set his hot, insolent gaze on her.
“Cole, I’m…I’m freezing. If…you won’t go, would you please turn your back so I…can get out and dress?”
“Okay, already.” Halfheartedly, he turned his back.
Not trusting him, she hesitated. A moment or two later, he heard water splash on limestone, followed by the whisper of damp feet on grass and the breaking of twigs as she scampered across the rocks to retrieve her clothes.
When a low curse escaped her lips, he turned out of concern and was rewarded with another glimpse of her tantalizing breasts and thighs. His breath hitched as she struggled to push her slim arms through the knotted sleeves of her wet, tangled T-shirt. Absorbed in pulling on her jeans, she didn’t look up and see that he couldn’t take his tortured eyes off her.
When she’d fastened her cutoffs, she looked up. “You cheated,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“I guess I shouldn’t wonder, since you’ll always think I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t deserve your respect.” With an indignant frown she leaned down and secured the now-docile Cinnamon with a leash.
“Damn,” he muttered, feeling guilty as well as angry.
That she could chastise him, for anything, when she’d jilted him for Turner, was gallingly unfair.
“Don’t worry. I won’t presume to trespass on your land again,” she said almost haughtily.
“You can swim here anytime,” he said coldly. “It’s just that I’d prefer that you bring a friend with you the next time.”
“Who? With the exception of Miss Jennie, people here don’t really like my mother or me much. If you’ll recall, I…I never had any real friends in this town.”
“I hear eight men stopped by to check on Miss Jennie this mornin’.”
“For your information, I wasn’t ever who you thought I was or who they probably think I am. It’s taken me a long time to believe in myself…after…after the way you and the town treated me.”
“Oh, really? I find that surprising. For someone so sensitive and romantic, you sure as hell slept with me and then ran off with Turner without so much as a goodbye.”
When her skin went as pale as the bleached limestone bank, he felt as if someone had kicked him in the gut. But even as she began to tremble, her eyes blazed.
“Believe what you want about me!” she whispered as she hugged her arms around herself. “I’m glad I don’t have to care anymore.” But her eyes belied her indifference.
When he’d left the rig today he’d sworn he wouldn’t rehash the past, but now he had to ask. “Tell me why you ran off with him. You owe me an explanation.”
“Once…I foolishly thought…maybe I did owe you. So, before I left, I called you to explain, remember?”
Fury that she would lie so carelessly swelled inside him. “The hell you did! You called me eighteen months later—when it was a little late, since I was already married to Lizzie!”
“No! I called you the night I left. But your mother answered the phone. She told me exactly what you told her to tell me, that she didn’t want my kind in your life. So, excuse me if I didn’t call you back. I had a lot on my plate. But my problems then are none of your business now.”
“My mother? You talked to my mother that night?”
She nodded.
“I don’t believe you! There’s no way she could have resisted throwing such a call from you in my face!”
“I don’t care what you believe. Do you deny that when I called you again, a year and a half later, you were even less receptive than she’d been that night? If you do, let me refresh your memory. You answered the phone and told me you never wanted to talk to me again! Then you slammed the phone down. At least your mother had the guts to talk to me!”
Her beautiful violet eyes shimmered with remembered pain, making a muscle in his gut pull. Her accusation about his mother didn’t play. His mother, who had rigid views of social order, would have skinned him alive if she’d found out he had anything to do with Jesse Ray’s daughter.
“The truth is—you waited a whole year and a half after you’d run off to call. Like I said, it was too late.”
“Well, then let’s leave it at that! You got married to a nice, respectable girl. Maybe I moved on, too. Okay?”
But it wasn’t okay. Why were feelings that he’d suppressed for years suddenly so important to him?
“I told myself to leave it at that! And I did, as long as Lizzie was alive—for her sake. But now that she’s gone and you’re here, damn it, I want to know why you left me for Vernon without any explanation. All I knew was what your mother told everybody—that you’d flaunted yourself around Vernon to spite her and had run off with him for the same reason.”
She whitened. Although she tried to hide her fear, he saw that her hands were shaking. What was she so scared of?
Then she drew herself up straighter, and her beautiful lips thinned with determination. It was as if she found some inner strength that enabled her to face him down.
“I—I wasn’t myself when I left. After talking to your mother, I believed you were relieved to be rid of me.”
Relieved? He’d been in so much agony he’d thought he was dying. When he couldn’t get in touch with her, he’d been wild to find her, to talk to her. Wanting to hurt her now, as she’d hurt him then, he said, “I should have been relieved. Any sane guy would’ve been. You were your mother’s daughter, in the end.”
“Well, there you go,” she whispered in a small voice. “Lucky you…to escape my clutches.”
Her casually tossed comment pushed him over the edge. “Well, damn it, what if I wasn’t smart enough to be relieved?” he growled, hating himself for not hiding that she’d held such power over him. Hell, she still held power over him as she stood there looking pretty and wounded and sexy as hell in the wet T-shirt that clung to her breasts. “When you ran off, I was worried sick about you.”
“You were?” She bit her lip and looked away in confusion, as if what he’d said made no sense.
“I thought about you all the time. I didn’t want to believe what your mother was saying without hearing your side,” he said. “Every night I’d come out here and wonder how you could just disappear like that. I missed you, damn it! I wanted to know you were okay, at least, even if you were with Turner.”
“Did you ever try to find me?”
“I wanted to. But, hell, my father got sick a week after you left. I was forced to take