“I can handle it,” Tory stated, her gaze shifting from Trask to Keith and back again. Her shoulders were squared, her lips pressed together in determination. Fire sparked in her eyes.
Keith understood the unspoken message. Tory would handle Trask in her own way. “All right. I’ve said everything I needed to say anyway.” He pointed a long finger at Trask. “But as far as I’m concerned, McFadden, you have no business here.” Keith strode out of the room, grabbed his hat off the wooden peg in the entry hall, jerked open the front door and slammed it shut behind him.
Trask watched Keith leave with more than a little concern. “He’s got more of a temper than you did at that age.”
“He hates you,” Tory said simply.
Trask smiled wryly and pushed his fingers through his hair. “Can’t say as I blame him.”
“I hate you, too,” Tory lied.
“No, no you don’t.” He saw that she was about to protest and waved off her arguments before they could be voiced. “Oh, you hate what I did all right. And, maybe a few years back, you did hate me, or thought that you did. But now you know better.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind.”
“Sure you do. You know that I haven’t come back here to hurt you and you know that I only did what I did five years ago because I couldn’t lie on the witness stand. The last thing I wanted to do was send your dad to prison—”
Tory desperately held up a palm. “Stop!” she demanded, unable to listen to his lies any longer. “I—I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses or rationalizations—”
“It’s easier to hate me, is that it?”
“No—yes! God, yes. I can’t have you come in here and confuse me and I don’t want to be a part of this...investigation or whatever you want to call it. I don’t care about anonymous letters.”
“Or dead calves?”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” she said firmly, though she had to fight to keep her voice from trembling.
Trask studied his hands before lifting his eyes to meet her angry gaze. “I think you’re wrong, Tory. Doesn’t it strike you odd that everyone you know wants you to avoid me?”
She shook her head and looked at the ceiling. “Not after the hell you put me through five years ago,” she whispered.
“You mean that it hasn’t crossed your mind that someone is deliberately trying to keep you out of this investigation for a reason?”
“Such as?”
“Such as hiding the guilty person’s identity.”
“I can’t be involved in this,” Tory said, as if to convince herself. She had to get away from Trask and his damned logic. When she was around him, he turned her mind around. She began walking toward the door but stopped dead in her tracks when he spoke.
“Are you afraid of the truth?”
“Of course not!” She turned and faced him.
He pushed himself away from the couch. “Then maybe it’s me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, but as he advanced upon her, she saw the steadfastness of his gaze. It dropped from her eyes to her mouth and settled on the rising swell of her breasts. “I’m not afraid of you, Trask. I never have been. Not even after what you did to me.”
He stopped when he was near her and his eyes silently accused her of attempting to deceive him. When he reached forward to brush a wayward strand of hair away from her face, his fingertip touched her cheek, but she didn’t flinch. “Then maybe you’re afraid of yourself.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“I don’t think so.” His fingers wrapped around her nape and tilted her head upward as he lowered his head and captured her lips with his. His mouth was warm and gentle, his tongue quick to invade her parted lips. Memories of hot summer nights, star-studded skies and bodies glistening with the sheen of perfect afterglow filled her mind. How easily she could slip backward...
The groan from deep in his throat brought her crashing back to a reality as barren as the desert. He didn’t love her, had never loved her, but was attempting once again to use her. As common sense overtook her, Tory tried to step backward but the arms surrounding her tightened, forcing her body close.
“Let go of me,” she said, her eyes challenging.
“I don’t think so. Letting you go was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made and believe me, I’ve made my share. I’m not about to make the same mistake twice.”
“You may have made a lot of mistakes, Trask, but you didn’t have a choice where I was concerned. I swore that I’d never let you hurt me again, and it’s a promise to myself that I intend to keep.”
The warm hands at the base of her spine refused to release her. Instead they began to slowly massage her, and through the thin fabric of her cotton blouse, she could feel Trask’s heat. It seeped through the cloth and warmed her skin, just as it had in the past.
His lips caressed her face, touching the sensitive skin of her eyelids and cheeks.
“I can’t let this happen,” she whispered, knowing that she was unable to stop herself.
Her skin began to flush and the yearnings she had vowed dead reawakened as his mouth slid down her throat and his hands came around to unbutton her blouse. As the fabric parted Tory could feel his lips touching the hollow of her throat and the swell of her breasts.
“Trask, please...don’t,” she said, swallowing against the desire running wildly in her blood.
His tongue circled the delicate ring of bones at the base of her throat while his hands opened her blouse and pushed it gently off her shoulders. “I’ve always loved you, Tory,” he said as he watched her white breasts rise and fall with the tempo of her breathing.
Her rosy nipples peeked seductively through the sheer pink lace of her bra and the swelling in his loins made him say things he would have preferred to remain secret. “Love me,” he pleaded, lifting his gaze to her green eyes.
“I...I did, Trask,” she replied, trying to think rationally. She reached for the blouse that had fallen to the floor, but his hand took hold of her wrist. “I loved you more than any woman should love a man and...and I paid for that love. I will never, never make that mistake again!”
The fingers over her wrist tightened and he jerked her close to his taut body. With his free hand he tilted her face upward so that she was forced to stare into his intense blue eyes. “You can come up with all the reasons and excuses you want, lady, but they’re all a pack of lies.”
“You should know, senator. You wrote the book on deceit.”
His jaw whitened and his lips twisted cynically. “Why don’t you look in the mirror, Tory, and see the kind of woman you’ve become: a woman who’s afraid of the truth. You won’t face the truth about your father and you won’t admit that you still care for me.”
“There’s a big difference between love and lust.”
“Is there?” He cocked a thick brow dubiously and ran his finger down her throat, along her breastbone to the front clasp of her bra. “What we felt for each other five years ago, what would you call that?”
“All those emotions were tangled in a web of lies, Trask. Each one a little bigger than the last. That’s how I’ve come to think of what we shared: yesterday’s lies.” He released her slowly and didn’t protest when she reached for her blouse and slipped it on.
“Then maybe it’s time to start searching for the truth.”
“By reopening the investigation