CHAPTER THREE
THE DAY SPENT SIGHTSEEING with Cash was, Tippy thought later, one of the best days of her entire life. He seemed to know New York like the back of his hand, and he enjoyed sharing little-known bits of history with Tippy and Rory.
“How do you know so much about this place?” Rory wanted to know when they were back in Tippy’s apartment that evening.
“My best friend in basic training was from New York City,” he confided. “He was a gold mine of information!”
Tippy laughed. “I have a friend who’s like that about Nassau,” she said. “She’s on a modeling trip now, to Russia, of all places.”
“What is she modeling?”
Tippy gave him a mischievous look. “Swimsuits.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not! The powers that be thought it would be sexy to have her pose with the Kremlin in the back ground, wearing fur boots and a fur coat.”
“She’ll be pickled if she does that here, won’t she?” he asked.
“It’s fake fur,” she pointed out, laughing. “But it’s very expensive fake fur, and it looks real.”
“How about a sandwich, Cash?” Rory called from the kitchen.
“Not for me, thanks, Rory. I’m going back to my hotel to unwind,” he added with a smile. “I had a great time today.”
“So did I, Cash,” Rory said sincerely. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”
“Are you?” Tippy echoed.
He glanced from Rory’s curious expression to Tippy’s radiant one. “Why not?” he mused, smiling. “I can stand a tour of the museums if you can.”
“I love museums!” Rory enthused.
“As long as I don’t have to pose in one.” Tippy sighed. “I have terrible emotional scars from posing with one leg up, leaning back, in front of a Rodin sculpture for four hours.”
“I wonder if it’s the one I’m thinking of?” Cash drawled, chuckling when her cheeks went pink.
“I’m sure it was one that contained totally clothed people,” she lied.
He shook his head. “You wish,” he said. “What time do you people get up on a holiday week?”
“Eight,” Rory said.
Tippy nodded. “We’re not big on late nights around here. One of us is used to military routine, which be gins at daylight, and the other one has to get up before daylight to work on films,” she said, tongue in cheek.
“Eight it is, then. I know where there’s a bakery,” he told them. “They have homemade cinnamon buns, bear claws, filled doughnuts…”
“I can’t have sweets,” Rory replied sadly. He pointed at Tippy. “She has no willpower. If something sweet comes in the door, it will never leave.”
Tippy laughed delightedly. “He’s right. I’ve spent most of my life fighting excess pounds. We have bacon and eggs for breakfast. Pure protein. No bread.”
“Shades of basic training.” He sighed. “Okay. Can we have breakfast here? But you’d better make coffee,” he added sternly. “I am not having breakfast without coffee, even if that means bringing it in a sippy cup.”
“A sippy cup?” Tippy teased.
“I look sexy holding a sippy cup,” he replied, and the smile on his lips was a genuine one. It had been a long time since he’d smiled at a woman and meant it. Well, except for Christabel Gaines. But she was married to his best friend now.
“Well, I’m having a sandwich before I go to bed,” Rory called. “Good night, Cash! See you tomorrow!”
“That’s a deal,” Cash called back.
He caught Tippy’s soft hand in his and tugged her to the door with him. “I’ll check and see if there’s anything good at the opera or the ballet, if you’d like…”
“I love either one,” she exclaimed.
“Symphony orchestras?” he asked, testing.
She nodded enthusiastically.
“I guess it won’t kill me to wear a suit,” he sighed.
“You took Christabel Gaines to a ballet in Houston, I recall,” she said, with just a hint of jealousy that she couldn’t disguise.
It surprised him. His dark eyes probed her light ones until she moved restlessly under the intensity of the gaze. “Christabel Dunn, these days. And, yes, I did. She’d never been to one in her life.”
“I thought she was a spoiled little princess,” Tippy commented. “I was wrong all the way down the line. She’s a very special woman. Judd’s lucky.”
“Yes, he is,” he had to agree. Christabel was still a sore spot with him. “They dote on the twins.”
“Babies are nice,” she said. “Rory was precious even at the age of four.” She smiled wistfully. “Every day’s an adventure with a child.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
She looked up, surprised by the expression on his lean, hard face.
He averted his eyes. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He let go of her hand and left her standing. She divined that something in his past had wounded him deeply, something to do with children. Judd had told her that he thought Cash had been married once, but no more than that. He was a puzzle. But he appealed to her in ways no other man ever had.
CASH ARRIVED AT EIGHT SHARP the next morning, carrying a silvertone coffee holder in one hand and a paper sack in the other.
“I made coffee,” she said quickly.
He lifted the holder. “Vanilla cappuccino,” he said, waving it under her nose. “My only real weakness. Well, except for these,” he waved the sack.
“What’s in there?” Tippy asked, following him to the breakfast table she’d already set, where Rory was waiting to start eating.
“Cheese Danishes,” he said. “Sorry. I can’t give up sugar. I think it’s one of the four major food groups, along with chocolate and ice cream and pizza.”
Rory burst out laughing. So did Tippy.
“Amazing,” she said, giving his powerful body a lingering scrutiny. “You don’t look as if you’ve ever tasted fat or sugar in your life.”
“I work out every day,” he confided. “I have to. Those uniforms are sewn on us, you know,” he added deadpan, “to emphasize what nice muscles we have.”
Her eyes glanced off his biceps, very noticeable in the knit shirt he was wearing with dark slacks, as he swung his black leather jacket onto an easy chair on his way to the kitchen.
“No comment?” he taunted.
She sighed. “I was just noticing the muscles,” she murmured dryly.
Rory had excused himself to go to the bathroom. Cash caught Tippy’s long skirt and pulled her close to his chair. “If you play your cards right, I just might take my shirt off for you one day,” he purred.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or protest. He was so unpredictable.
“Not right away, of course,” he added. “I’m not that kind of man!”
Now she did laugh. Her eyes lit up, sparkling like emeralds. He grinned, too. “Here. Have a cheese Danish. I brought enough for all of us.”
She reached down into the bag, very aware of his dark eyes on her face.
“Your skin is beautiful, even without makeup,” he noted deeply. “It looks like silk.”
Her head turned. She met his eyes evenly and her heart jumped. He was very sexy.
“What are you thinking?” he murmured.
“I’ll bet you know everything there is to know about women,” she confessed huskily.
His eyes narrowed. “And you know next to nothing about men.”
Her eyes misted. “I haven’t wanted to,” she said softly. Her gaze fell to his wide, chiseled mouth.
“Careful,” he said quietly. “I’ve kept to myself for a long time.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered daringly, meeting his searching gaze. “I wish…oh, I wish!”
“You wish…what?” he prompted, his jaw clutching as the fragrance of her body drifted down into his nostrils. She was so close that he could see her heart beating at the neck of her blouse. He wanted to jerk her down into his arms and kiss her until her beautiful mouth began to swell.
She was feeling the same hunger. She looked at his mouth and wondered how it would feel to kiss it in tensely, the way she’d stage-kissed her fellow actor in the movie they’d made at the Dunn ranch. She could al most taste Cash’s hard mouth. Her body felt swollen, achy. It was like a thirst that no water would ever be able to quench.
Her breath caught noisily in her throat as her full lips parted. “I wish…”
The sound of the toilet flushing broke them apart. She stood up, forgetting the Danish, and went to the sink to wash her hands because she needed something to still them.
Rory came back, totally oblivious to what he’d interrupted, and helped himself to a Danish. After a minute, Tippy poured coffee for herself and orange juice for Rory, and sat down at the table as if nothing at all had happened.
THEY WENT TO THE AMERICAN Museum of Natural History first, to see the renovated dinosaur exhibit on the fourth floor. There was a long line because of the special exhibits, one that included a film and a shop concerned only with Albert Einstein. They stood in line for over an hour before they were able to get their tickets.
Rory went from one of the fossils to another, eagerly climbing a flight of stairs above the tallest skeleton so that he could look down on the massive shoulder blades and hip joints.
“He loves dinosaurs,” Tippy remarked, sauntering along beside Cash in her long green velvet skirt with boots and a white silk blouse under her black leather coat. Her hair was around her shoulders, and she was drawing attention from men as well as women, despite the very light touch of cosmetics she’d used.
Beside her Cash felt a surge of pride in her company. She really was beautiful, he thought, and it had so little to do with surface appearance. She was pure gold inside, where it counted.
“I like dinosaurs myself,” he commented. “I was here several years ago, but I missed the dinosaurs because this exhibit was being reworked. They’re impressive.”
She leaned closer to a sign to read it.
“You aren’t wearing your glasses,” he remarked.
She laughed self-consciously. “I’m a walking disaster when I have them on,” she said dryly. “I clean them with whatever’s handy. The lenses stay scratched, and I’ve already had them replaced twice.”
“They have new lenses that don’t scratch easily,” he pointed out.
“Yes, that’s the kind I got. Sadly, they aren’t fool proof.” She lifted a beautiful shoulder. “I wish I could wear contacts, but my eyes don’t like them. I get infections.”
He reached out a big, lean hand and caught a strand of her hair in it, testing its softness and bringing her close up against him in the process. “Your hair is alive,” he said quietly. “I’ve never seen this color look so natural.”
“It is natural,” she replied, feeling her knees go shaky at the unexpected proximity. He smelled of cologne and soap—clean, attractive smells. Her hands rested on his shirt, feeling the warm muscle and the faint cushiony sensation of hair under her hands. She wanted to pull the shirt up and touch him there with a fervor that made her breath catch. She’d never felt desire so torrid in her life.
“And nothing about you is artificial?” he probed.
“Nothing physical,” she agreed.
His dark eyes searched her green ones for longer than he meant to. His face seemed to clench. She knew he could probably feel her heart racing. She couldn’t help it. He was a particularly masculine man. Every thing feminine inside her reacted to his touch. “I don’t trust women.”
“You were married,” she recalled.
He nodded. His fingers curled around the strand of hair he was holding. His eyes were haunted. “I loved her. I thought she loved me.” He laughed coldly. “She certainly loved what I could buy her.”
She felt cold chills run down her spine. “There’s so much in your past that you don’t talk about,” she said softly. “You’re very mysterious, in your way.”
“Trust comes hard to me,” he told her. “If people can get close to you, they can wound you.”
“And the answer is to keep everyone at arm’s length?” she replied.
“Don’t you?” he shot back. “Except for Rory, and briefly Judd Dunn, I don’t recall ever seeing you keeping company with anyone. Especially a man.”
She swallowed hard. “I have horrible memories of men. Except for Cullen, and there was no physical contact there. He liked women as friends, but found them physically repulsive.”
“Did you love him?”
“In my way, I did,” she said, surprising him. “He was one of two people in my entire life who were good to me without expecting anything in return.” Her smile was cynical. “You can’t imagine how many times you get propositioned in my line of work. It took years to perfect a line that worked.”
“You can’t blame men for trying, Tippy,” he said curtly. “You look like every man’s dream of perfection.”
Her heart jumped. “Even yours?” she asked in a teasing tone. Except she wasn’t teasing. She wanted him to want her. She’d never wanted anything so much.
He let go of her hair. “I gave up women years ago.”
“Aren’t you lonely?” she wanted to know.
“Are you?” he retorted.
She sighed, studying his strong features with a vague hunger. “I’ve got cold feet,” she said huskily. “Once or twice over the years I took a chance on someone who seemed nice. But nobody wanted to talk to me, to get to know me. They only wanted me in bed.”
His eyes narrowed. “Can you…?”
Her gaze fell to his chest, where the muscles were outlined by the close fit of his knit shirt. “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I haven’t…tried.”
“Do you want to?”
She bit her lower lip and frowned, staring at the dinosaur without really seeing it. “I’m twenty-six years old. I don’t risk my heart, and I’m happy enough. I have Rory and a career. I suppose I’ve got all I need.”
“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 continued, 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.”
“Anyway, Cullen told my mother that if she made any attempt to regain custody of me, he’d have a talk with Marcus. She knew about his reputation. She never tried to get custody of Rory, after that.”
“Do you see her?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “No. I don’t see her or talk to her, except through my attorney. But the last I heard she was down to her last dime and talking about the tabloids again.” She looked up at him. “I’m just starting in a new career. I can’t afford to have my name splattered all over in such a way that it would adversely affect my ability to work. Mud sticks. I could lose everything, including Rory, if she started talking about my past. She has nothing to lose.”