CHAPTER 8
Sometime during the night it started to rain. It was a slow, heavy downpour that rolled like thick molasses off of the roof above where Casey and Ryder were sleeping, encompassing them within a dark, wet cocoon of sound.
Ryder woke with a start, the dream in which he’d been lost still so fresh in his mind that he came close to believing it was real. He looked down at Casey who lay sleeping with her head upon his chest and her hand splayed across the beat of his heart. Any man would consider himself fortunate to be in Ryder’s place. The only problem was, she wasn’t as awake and willing as she’d been in his dream.
The air felt close. The room seemed smaller. He ached. He wanted. He couldn’t have. He moved, but only enough to brush the thick length of her hair that had fallen across her face. Her eyelashes fluttered against his chest. Her breasts had flattened against his side and she’d thrown her leg across the lower half of his body, pinning him in place. He swallowed a groan and made himself lie still when all he wanted was to be so far inside her warmth that nothing else mattered.
But lying still didn’t help his misery, and finally, he slipped out of her arms and rolled out of bed, then stood in the dark looking down at her as she slept.
She trusts you.
Rain hammered against the roof as need hammered through him.
She’s been hurt.
Hard. Constant. Insistent.
Justice men do not use women.
He turned and walked out of the room, grabbing his jeans from a chair as he headed for the door. He needed some air.
Some distance. Something else on which to focus besides the thrust of her breast and the juncture of her thighs. He kept telling himself that this overwhelming feeling was nothing more than a result of proximity, that reason would return with daylight and distance, but his heart wasn’t listening. He’d spent time with plenty of other women in his life and had been able to separate fact from fiction.
When he opened the door and stepped out on the landing, all he could see was a sheet of black rain falling directly before him. The security light was off. He reached back inside and flipped the light switch, clicking it on then off again, The power was out.
The porch was damp beneath his bare feet, but it felt good to be concentrating on something besides sex. He combed his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. The lack of electricity explained the sultry temperature inside the apartment, but it didn’t excuse the sluggish flow of blood through his veins. That blame lay with the woman who’d interfered in his dream.
A soft mist blowing off the rain drifted into his face. He looked up. The small overhang under which he was standing offered little shelter, yet it was enough for him to get by. Right now, he couldn’t have walked back in the apartment and minded his own business if his life depended on it. The dream was too real. She’d been too willing and so soft and he’d been halfway inside her and going for broke when something…call it conscience, call it reality, had yanked him rudely awake. Now he was left with nothing but a sexual hangover, an ache with no way of release. The muscles in his belly knotted and he drew a deep breath.
“Ryder?”
He groaned. She was right behind him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Go back to bed,” he said harshly, unwilling to turn around.
A hand crossed the bare surface of his back on its way to his shoulder. He pivoted, and she was right before him.
Humidity draped the fabric of her gown to every plane, angle and curve, delineating a fullness of breasts and a slim, flat belly. Sticking to places on her body it had no business, taunting Ryder by the reminder of what lay beneath.
His fingers curled into fists and he took a deep breath as he reminded himself that she was bruised and battered and didn’t deserve this from him. “Are you all right?”
“I just woke up and you were gone and I thought…” Her voice trailed off into nothing as she waited for an explanation that didn’t come.
Silence grew and the rain continued to fall.
Casey sensed his uneasiness but did not immediately attribute it to herself. They were still strangers. There was so much they didn’t know about each other. This mood he seemed to be in could have come from a number of reasons. And then suddenly the security light on the pole beyond the apartment came on. Although it was instantly diffused by the downpour, it was more than enough by which to see.
Dear God. It was all she could think as she shrank from the wild, hungry need on his face.
The moment she moved, he knew that he’d given himself away. Because he couldn’t go forward, he took a reluctant step back and walked out into the rain before one of them made a mistake that couldn’t be fixed.
Shocked by his sudden departure, Casey cried out, but it was too late. He was already gone—lost in the downpour, beyond the sound of her voice.
Ryder didn’t remember getting down the stairs. It was the rain that brought back his reason and calmed a wild, racing heart. Warm and heavy, it enveloped him—falling on his face, on his chest, down his body.
He began to walk, his bare feet sometimes ankle-deep in the runoff. He walked until a tree appeared in his path, then another, then another, and he realized he’d walked into the forest at the back of the estate. He paused at the edge, aware that he could go no farther in the state he was in, and found himself a place beneath the outspread limbs of an old magnolia.
Rain sounded like bullets as it peppered down on the large, waxy leaves above his head. But the longer he stood, the more the sound reminded him of hail. He drew a deep, shuddering breath and then cursed. It had hailed on them the night of the crash.
He closed his eyes, remembering the dead weight of holding his father’s lifeless body in his arms. Someone moaned and as he went to his knees, he knew it was himself that he had heard. Pain shafted through him, leaving him smothered beneath a familiar cover of guilt.
“Ah, God, make this stop,” he cried and then buried his face in his hands.
Back at the apartment, Casey stood on the landing, staring out at the night, anxiously watching for Ryder’s return. The urge to go after him was strong, yet she stayed her ground, well aware that it was her presence that had driven him away.
Mist dampened her hair and her gown, plastering both to her face and her body and still she waited. Finally, she bowed her head and closed her eyes. “Dear Lord, help me find a way to make this right.”
And the rain continued to fall.
Some time later, it stopped as suddenly as it had started—turned off at the tap with nothing but a leak now and then from a low-hanging cloud.
* * *
Ryder came up the stairs in a bone-weary daze, weary from lack of sleep and from wrestling with the demons inside himself. His bare feet split the puddle at the top of the landing and he walked inside without care for the fact that he would be dripping every inch of the way to the bath.
When he closed the door behind him, the cool waft of air that encircled his face told him the air-conditioning was back on inside. That was good. He’d had enough of close quarters to last him a lifetime and the night wasn’t even over.
He walked quietly, so as not to disturb Casey’s slumber in the other room, and was halfway across the floor when her voice stopped him in his tracks.
“I’m sorry,” Casey said quietly. “Very, very sorry. I asked too much of you and you were too much the gentleman to tell me so.” He heard her shudder on a breath. “I humbly beg your forgiveness.”
A puddle was forming where he stood and yet the despair in her voice kept him pinned to the spot.
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Only me. I was selfish… thoughtless. I promise it won’t happen again.”
Why did that not make him happy? “Just let it go.”
“I laid out some fresh towels. The bed is turned back. From this night on, we’ll take turns sleeping in the bed.”
The thought of her, bruised and aching and waiting up for him to come back from trying to outrun his devils made him angry, more with himself than with her; however, she caught the force of his guilt.
“Like hell. Go to bed and close your eyes. I didn’t get mowed down by a truck. I don’t have a busted lip or a black eye, and if I hurt, it’s of my own making, not yours.”
“But this arrangement isn’t fair to you.”
He almost laughed. “Hell, honey, there hasn’t been two minutes of fair in my life in so long I wouldn’t know it if it stood up and slapped my face.” His voice softened. “Go to bed… please.”
It was the please that did it. She stood, moving past him in the dark like a pale ghost. Only after she was safe in bed with the sheets up to her chin did she sense him coming through the room. He paused at the bathroom door.
“If I’m gone when you wake up, call Tilly. She’ll bring you some breakfast.”
“I’ll need a ride to work,” she reminded him.
“No, you won’t. I think you need another day of rest. Tomorrow is Friday. That will give you a long weekend to recuperate.”
She totally ignored the fact that he’d just told her what to do, but at this point, it made no sense to argue with a sensible suggestion. “Where will you be?” Casey asked.
“Checking on your car that was towed. Contacting your insurance company.” This time he managed a chuckle. “You know, doing stuff.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For doing my stuff.”
This time, he really did laugh, and the sound carried Casey off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
Miles fought the covers beneath which he was sleeping as his dreams jumped from one crazy scenario to another. One minute he was flying high above the ground without a plane, flapping his arms like a gut-shot crow and trying to find a safe place to land, and the next moment he was standing in the middle of the intersection where Casey had had her wreck, watching in mute horror as her black sports car and the one-ton truck with which she had collided kept coming at him over and over from different angles. Each time he would escape being crushed between their vehicles, the scene would rewind and replay. On a nearby street corner, his grandmother kept pointing her finger and shouting, “I told you so! I told you so!”
He awoke bathed in sweat, only then aware that it was pour ing down rain and the electricity was off. He cursed the bad taste in his mouth and got up with a thump just as the power returned. He could tell because his digital clock started blinking and the security lights outside came on all at once, returning a familiar pale glow to the curtains at his window.
He shoved them aside, looking down through the rain to the lawn below, and knew that the weather tomorrow would be miserable. The air would feel like a sauna and the bar ditches would be filled and overflowing.
“What the hell?”
There, through the rain, he thought he saw movement! He watched, staring harder, trying to focus on the shape. Just as he was about to reach for the phone to call the police, the figure moved within a pale ring of a security light and Miles froze, his hand in midair.
“Him.” He stepped forward, all but pressing his nose against the glass for a better look. There was no mistaking who it was below. It was Ryder, half-dressed and moving at what seemed a desperate pace. He watched until the man disappeared from view before settling back down in his bed, his drink of water forgotten.
Long after it had stopped raining and he was back in bed, he kept wondering what would drive a man out of his bed and into a night like this? Had he and Casey fought? A twinge of guilt pushed at the edge of his conscience. She had gone through some hell of her own today. Tomorrow he’d send her some flowers. Having settled that, he turned over and quickly fell back asleep. It didn’t occur to Miles that Casey would ultimately wind up paying for her own flowers, and if it had, he wouldn’t have cared. To Miles, it was the thought that would count.
* * *
Lash awoke with a curse. Water was dripping from the ceiling and onto his left cheek. He got up to push his bed to a new location and stubbed his toe in the dark. The roof leaked. What else was new? The real problem lay in the fact that he was sleeping on the ground floor and it was still coming in through the ceiling. He didn’t even want to think how the upper two stories of Graystone would be suffering tonight. Cursing his wet bed and sore toe, he crawled back between the sheets, turned his damp pillow to the other side, and lay down.
Only sleep wouldn’t come. No matter how hard he tried, his mind refused to relax. He thought of the phone call he’d had this afternoon from the police. Just for a moment before they’d completely explained, he’d thought they’d been calling to inform him of Casey’s death, and then he realized that because he was the family lawyer, they’d called to tell him where they’d towed her car.
What bothered him most about the incident was the lack of emotion he’d felt at the news. He loved her. At least he thought he had. Wasn’t a man supposed to cry at such a loss?
He closed his eyes, trying to imagine Casey dead, picturing the hordes of people that would come to her funeral, of the eulogy he would have delivered expounding her life. He saw her lying in the casket, beautiful even in death, and felt guilt that he was letting himself play so lightly with something as serious as her life.
He rolled over, taking the sheets with him as turned on his side, still haunted by the sight of her face. As he tried to sleep, his thoughts began to unfurl like jumbled up scenes in an unedited movie.
In one scene, she stared at him, cool and patient, and he realized that he was remembering the way she’d looked the day of the reading of the will. He tossed, rolling himself and the covers to the other side of the bed where Casey lay in wait for his arrival. There she stood again, her face a study in shock that slowly turned to a cold, white rage. He remembered that well. It was the way she’d looked when he’d announced the terms of Delaney Ruban’s will.
He groaned. He could have talked Delaney out of the foolishness. Oh God, if only I had. But it was too late. Lash had presumed too much and he knew it. Who could have known? The Casey he thought he knew would never have gone into the flatlands and come out married to some hitchhiker, to some stranger she found in a bar.
And therein lay part of Lash’s dilemma. He’d bet his life and the restoration of his family’s honor on a woman who had never existed outside the realm of his imagination. In other words, he’d bet the farm on a woman who didn’t exist.
“Casey.”
The sound of her name on his lips made him crazy. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. If things had gone the way they should have, she would be here, right now, in bed beside him. He closed his eyes and saw her smile, imagined he could feel the touch of her hand on his face, the breath of her laughter against his neck. He reached out, tracing the shape of her body with his fingertips, watching her eyes as they grew heavy with passion. He grew hot, then hard and aching, and when there was no one around to take care of the need, he reached down and dealt with it on his own, calling her name aloud as his body betrayed him.
* * *
“More flowers for little sister,” Joshua announced, carrying another vase of cut flowers into the library and setting them on a table just out of the sunlight.
Casey smiled, more at the use of her childhood name than for the flowers he carried into the room. She started to get up when he waved her back.
“You stay where you’re put,” he ordered. “I’ll be bringin’ those cards to you.”
Casey laughed. “You sure are bossy today.”
Joshua lifted the card from the flowers and dropped it in her lap.
“No more than usual, I’d say.”
He straightened the edge of the blue afghan covering her legs then patted her knee as he’d done so often when she was a child. His dark eyes searched the marks on her face. Her lip was no longer swollen, but the bruises were spreading and the scratches had scabbed over. The sights deepened the frown on his brow. He couldn’t have cared for her more if she’d been born of his blood.
“You be needin’ anything, you just give me a ring, you hear?”
Casey reached out and caught his hand, pulling it to her cheek.
“Thank you, Joshie…for everything.”
He shook his head, embarrassed at emotion he couldn’t hide. “Don’t need to thank me for doing my job,” he muttered, and stalked out of the room as fast as his legs would take him.
Casey glanced at the card, then back at the flowers. These were from Libertine Delacroix and they were pulling double duty: get-well sympathies and congratulations on Casey’s recent wedding. She smiled. If Delaney were here he would be eating this up. Libertine was at the top of the county’s social echelon. She had a summer home in Ruban Crossing and the family home on the river outside of Jackson.
The doorbell rang at the same time that the telephone pealed. Aware that Joshua couldn’t be in two places at once, she picked up the phone.
“Ruban residence.”
“Casey? Is that you?”
It was Lash. At that moment, she wished with all her heart that she’d let the darned thing ring.
“Yes, it’s me. What can I do for you?”
She heard him clear his throat and could imagine the papers he would be shuffling as he gathered his thoughts. However, he surprised her with a quick retort.
“I heard about your accident and am so very glad that you’re all right.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes, well… I know this may be an inconvenient time, but I was wondering if I might come by. There are some papers you need to sign.”
She frowned. The last person she wanted to see was Lash and the last thing she wanted to do was think about her grandfather’s death. But if there were more papers to sign regarding Delaney’s will, she would have to do both.
“Well, I was just about to—”
“It won’t take long.”
She was honest enough to know that what she’d done by marrying Ryder had probably ended a lifetime of plans Lash must have had. Everyone knew that Lash’s father had gone through the Marlow money as if it had been water and that his mother had run off with a trucker soon afterward. Everyone also knew that while Lash was a lawyer of the courts, his only ambitions leaned toward the restoration of his family name and the family home. And, if she’d married him as Delaney had planned, it could have happened. He would have had unlimited money at his disposal.
She shuddered. It was a wonder he didn’t hate her guts. She thought of the wedding gift he’d sent that was still in her desk drawer at the office. In spite of his own disappointment, Lash had found it within himself to do the right thing and wish her well. She sighed. Guilty conscience won out.
“I suppose so,” she said. “If it won’t take long.”
“Certainly not, my dear. I can promise that what I need won’t take long at all.”
“Then I’ll be waiting.”
She hung up the phone as Ryder walked in the room carrying a bright yellow, happy face balloon. The frown on her face disappeared.
“Oh, how sweet! Who sent me the balloon? I haven’t had a balloon since I was little.”
He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, then handed it to her.
“It’s kind of pitiful compared to all these elegant flowers, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Although the kiss was as harmless as if it had come from a child, Casey felt her face flush. After last night, the word harmless did not mesh with the man who’d walked out of the apartment and into the rain.
“Is this from you?”
He stood at the end of the couch, absorbing the aftermath of yesterday’s wreck on her face. Finally, he nodded, and then he grinned and Casey thought she would forever remember the way he looked, smiling down at her with the sunlight coming through the window behind him.
“With no strings attached.” Then he laughed aloud when she dangled the one tied to the balloon. “Except the obvious, of course.”
Casey grinned and handed him the balloon. “Will you tie it on the back of that chair for me?”
He did as she asked, then gave the balloon a final thump and set it to bobbing as he moved away. The big yellow happy face smiled down at her from across the room. Casey smiled back, then noticed that Ryder was leaving.
“Can’t you sit down and talk to me?”
Ryder stopped at the doorway. When he turned, there was an odd, almost childlike hurt on his face.
“You don’t need to pretend with me, Casey.”
Suddenly, last night was out in the open. All the tension that had sent him out in the rain was back between them and there was nothing to say that would change what had happened.
Angry, she threw off the afghan and stood, unwilling to say this lying down. “The last time I played pretend, I was six years old. I pretended my mother and father weren’t dead. When it didn’t come true, I never tried again.”
Ryder absorbed her anger as well as the passion with which she spoke, letting it flow over and then around him. Just when he thought she was finished, she came at him again. It would seem she wasn’t through.
“There are things that need to be said between us. I would think that saying them in the bright light of day would be a hell of a lot smarter than waiting for dark. The world closes in when the sun goes down. Even with the absence of light, I’ve found it a difficult place in which to hide.”
Stunned by the truth in her words, he couldn’t find it in himself to walk away.
“So… is this our first fight?” he asked, and was rewarded by the red flush he saw staining her cheeks.
“Can’t you be serious?” she muttered.
“Well, yes, ma’am, I can be serious as hell. However, I don’t think you’re one bit ready for that.”
Casey paled. Just when she told herself he was a comfortable man to be around, that stranger came back.
“I thought you’d like to know that carpenters will be arriving tomorrow. I’m adding on a room to the garage apartment. Since we won’t be sharing a… I mean we can’t… We aren’t going to…” She took a deep breath and started over, ignoring the heat on her face and neck. “You won’t have to sleep on the floor much longer.”
He thought about waking to find her wrapped in his arms. “That’s real thoughtful of you, Casey.”
“It is only fair.”
His voice softened. “And you’re always fair, aren’t you, girl?”
Before she could answer, Joshua entered the room with Lash Marlow at his heels.
“Mr. Marlow is here. Says he has an appointment.”
Willing herself not to flinch at what she perceived as accusation in Lash Marlow’s expression, Casey eased herself back to the couch.
“Lash, it’s good to see you. Ryder and I were just about to have coffee. Won’t you join us?”
Lash pivoted, surprised that he and Casey would not be alone.
“That’s all right,” Ryder said. “I’ll just leave you two alone to—”
“No!” Casey took a deep breath and made herself relax when she really wanted to scream. “There’s no need,” she said, softening her words with a smile. “It’s nothing confidential. Only some papers to sign.”
“She’s right. Please don’t leave on my account,” Lash said and then smiled, and the sight made Casey shudder. It was the least happy expression she’d ever seen on anyone’s face.
“Besides, I believe there should be no secrets between a man and his wife,” he added.
Casey couldn’t look Ryder in the face, and Ryder refused to sit down. Even after Joshua returned with the tray of coffee and Ryder had accepted his cup, the words kept ringing in his ears. No secrets. No secrets. Hell, there hadn’t been more than ten minutes of honesty between them since he’d said “I do.”
She thought he was a footloose drifter who’d wasted his life on the road. He didn’t have it in him to tell her the truth because he was still trying to come to terms with some truths of his own.
There was a little matter of being responsible for his father’s death and still finding the courage to live with it.
Every breath Ryder took was a reminder to him that Micah could no longer do the same. Every sunset he saw, every morning that came, came with the knowledge that, for his father, those simple pleasures had ceased. He carried his guilt with the ease of a man who’s lived long with the shroud. Close to his heart. Selfish with the pain that shoved at him day after day.
Casey handed back the last of the papers. Lash took them from her, letting his fingertips accidentally brush the palm of her hand.
When she flinched, he had an urge to lean over and slap her face. How dare she have judged him and found him lacking? His family could trace their lineage back to the Mayflower.
Then he glanced at Ryder, careful to hide his thoughts. He would bet a lot—if he had it to bet—that this one didn’t have two nickels to call his own. At least I have my education—and several generations of a fine and noble name. In Lash’s opinion, Ryder Justice was nothing more than a stray, an alley cat of a man who’d been in the right place at the right time. That’s what he was. That and nothing more.
Lash slid the papers into his briefcase and stood. “I’d better be going—let you get some rest and let your husband get on with his work.”
The sarcasm was there. It wasn’t obvious, but that wasn’t Lash Marlow’s way. Casey chose to ignore the dig, and then she remembered the gift that he’d sent.
“Lash. I haven’t had time to send a card, but I want to thank you in person for the lovely wedding gift you had sent to the office. It’s stunning, truly stunning.”
Lash turned, and there was an odd, satisfied smile on his face. “It’s an heirloom, you know. It belonged to my grandfather, Aaron Marlow.”
Casey looked startled. She’d had no idea. “Why, Lash, that’s generous of you, but you really shouldn’t have.”
His gaze turned flat, almost expressionless. “Oh, it was nothing,” he said. “After all, if things had been different, it would have been yours anyway. I thought you should have something to remember me by.” He ventured a look at Ryder who had remained silent throughout their entire conversation. “I don’t want you to think I’m treading on your territory,” he said. “It’s just that Casey and I have known each other for years.”
Ryder set down his cup and then glanced at Casey before looking back at Lash. “I’m not worried. Casey is a woman of her word. Besides, I’m not a man who believes in boundaries.”
Lash was more than mildly interested in the concept of what Ryder had to say. “So by that are you hinting at the fact that you believe in open marriages?”
Ryder took one step forward, but it was enough to back Lash up two.
“Not only no, but hell, no,” Ryder said. “A man and woman stay together out of a commitment, not because there’s a fence they can’t climb.”
Feeling slightly threatened by something he didn’t quite understand, Lash started for the door. “At any rate, I hope you both get what you deserve.”
Ryder thought about what the lawyer had said long after he was gone. There was something about him that didn’t quite mesh.