Chapter Two.

Tess moaned in her sleep as the pain caught her unawares. She'd been dreaming. Probably about Dane, she thought drowsily. She never dreamed about anyone else. That was almost comical, consid- ering how badly he'd hurt her.

A sound penetrated her semiaware state. She opened her eyes in time to see Dane sitting down in the chair beside the bed.

"What are you doing back?" she asked, her body going rigid.

"It's a workday."

"I'm working," he said. "Looking after you."

The wording brought back unbearable memories of the time that he'd been shot-and what had followed. She closed her eyes on a wave of pain. "Please go away," she whispered huskily.

He took a slow breath. The anguish in her face made him uneasy.

"You don't have anyone else."

That was true. Her grandmother had died a year ago.

Her eyes met his, and there was nothing in her face to betray what she really felt. "You're just my boss, Dane," she said quietly. "That doesn't require you to look after me."

He sat up, his forearms across his knees as he stared at her. "I've never asked. Maybe I need to. How much damage did I do that day?"

She flushed and averted her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly.

4Diana Palmer "Don't you?" he asked on a cold laugh. "We've waltzed around it for three years. I can't get near you, even to apologize."

"Why should you care?" she replied. "You wanted me out of your life. You got it. I wouldn't come near you now for a handful of diamonds!''

"Me or any other man," he said out of the blue.

She pulled the sheet closer, her eyes on the window, not on him.

"Don't you have something better to do than bait me?"

"I'm taking you down to the ranch to recuperate."

She went white. She sat up in bed, her eyes like saucers in a face drained of life.

"Oh, my G.o.d, don't!" he said harshly. "Don't look like that!"

Her hand trembled on the sheet. "No," she whispered, choking on the word. "Not in your house, with you. Not ever!"

His eyes closed. He couldn't bear the way she looked. He got up jerkily and went to the window, lighting a cigarette as he stared out at nothing at all. He drew in a harsh breath of pungent smoke and let it out.

"I didn't realize you were a virgin," he said curtly. "Not until it was too late and I'd frightened you half to death. Don't you think I know why you don't go out with men?" He turned, pinning her shocked eyes with his. "Don't you think I care about what I've done to you?"

She swallowed, dropping her gaze to her cold, nervous hands on the sheet. "It was a long time ago...."

"It might as well have been yesterday," he said heavily. "G.o.d in heaven, stop pushing me away!"

She flushed. "I haven't."

He turned, moving back toward the bed, his face as drawn as her own. He paused beside her. "Tess, I know you're afraid of me physically. I'd have to be blind not to be aware of it. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want you where you'll be taken care of until you're back on your feet again. Beryl will be at the ranch if I'm not."

"I don't know Beryl. Helen says I can stay with her...."

"When Helen isn't at work, she's at ballet cla.s.s. If she has any free time at all, she's eating pizza with her friend Harold. She means 35 well, but you'd be alone most every evening, and all day while she's at work."

"I'd be all right by myself."

He moved closer, hating the way she stiffened. "Listen," he said through his teeth. "You saw a drug deal go down. You'll have to testify. The policemen didn't actually see the drugs being pa.s.sed, do you understand? You're the only witness who actually saw them.

One man is still loose, and he almost certainly knows who you are by now. Do you get the picture?"

"You can't mean what I think you do," she said slowly.

"The h.e.l.l I can't! I dealt with this kind of vermin for ten years.

I know what lengths they'll go to. You aren't going to be safe until they apprehend the second man and bring them both up for trial. I want you where I am, where I can take care of you. When I'm not home, my ranch manager is. He was a ranger back in the forties, and he's almost as good a shot as I am."

She put her face in her hands. It was agonizing to have to agree to what he wanted. She'd almost rather have taken her chances with the drug dealers.

"Hate me, if it helps," he said. "But come with me. Don't throw your life away."

She smoothed back her long, disheveled hair. "What kind of a life do I have?" she asked miserably. "Work and television don't add up to much."

"You're twenty-two," he said. "Years too young to be that cyn- ical."

"Oh, I learned from an expert," she said, lifting her face. "You taught me."

Her expression made him uncomfortable. "I've never had anyone of my own," he said shortly. "My father left when I was a boy.

He couldn't take the pressure of responsibility. I worshiped him, but my mother hated him, hated me because I looked like him. Jane said she loved me when we were first married, but she walked out on me and didn't look back." He leaned over her, his eyes black as coals. "You wanted to love me, and I wouldn't let you. I hurt you, made you afraid of me. Don't you get it, little girl? I don't know what love is!"

36.

"You needn't look at me as if I'm any threat," she said defiantly.

"I gave up on you years ago."

"Yes. I know."

She averted her eyes. "I don't love you. I had an inconvenient fascination for you that you put into perspective for me. You won't have to fight me off ever again."

His lean hand went to her face. He touched her cheek lightly, catching her chin when she tried to jerk away. His eyes probed hers relentlessly.

"That goes double for me," he said. "I won't ever touch you that way again."

She watched him, too aware of the warm fingers on her softly rounded chin. "You would have forced me," she choked out.

His face contorted. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn't. He'd been out of his mind. "You don't understand," he said bitterly.

She stared at him as if she didn't quite comprehend. He sounded tortured, haunted. "Dane?" she whispered.

He wouldn't look at her. "You were a virgin," he said huskily.

"But I wasn't. I'd had women. You were soft and vulnerable and loving, and I wanted you in a way I...couldn't handle."

Wheels turned in her mind. Men were vulnerable sometimes; even in her innocence she knew that. She'd avoided the thought for years, but a part of her had realized how desperate he was for her that day, how hungry. "You scared me out of my mind," she laughed ner- vously. "Every time I went out with a man, I was afraid he might become like that, and I wouldn't be able to get away in time."

"That isn't surprising," he replied. "Will you believe that it hasn't been easy for me, either? You can't imagine what it does to me when you cringe every time I come close to you."

Her chest rose and fell slowly. She searched his eyes. "It was a long time ago, wasn't it? I suppose I blew it up in my mind until it was nightmarish."

He saw the faint softness in her eyes and hesitated. "Tess, is it only fear that you feel when you're with me?" he asked. His eyes fell to her mouth, to the helpless parting of her lips under the intent stare. His thumb moved slowly, the nail just lightly tracing the moist inner surface of her lower lip in a movement that made her breath 37 catch. "Or is there something more, in spite of the way I frightened you?"

She pulled back frantically, oblivious to what he'd said at the last in her desperation to get away from that maddening touch. Her eyes widened and her heartbeat became rushed.

He had to drag his eyes back up to hers. His own breathing was uneasy. So it wasn't all terror. Something inside him thawed a little, even as he watched her futile attempts to hide what he'd aroused in her with that sensuous little brush of his hand. Amazing that in all his thirty-four years, he'd never thought of touching a woman's mouth exactly like that.

"No," he said, almost to himself. "It's a little more complicated than fear, isn't it?"

"Dane..."

"Your doctor says you can leave in the morning. In the mean- while, there's a uniformed officer outside the door. He's been there since you were brought in, and he'll be there until I take you home."

She watched him nervously as he put out his cigarette.

He caught her scrutiny and his dark eyes slid to meet hers. "You make me want to be gentle. That's a first," he said quietly. He studied her thoughtfully. "Maybe I could make you want my touch, if I tried."

Cold chills worked down her spine. "No," she whispered huskily.

"I won't let you touch me. Not the way...you did that day!"

"I've never been with a virgin, little one," he said, his voice deep and slow. "I've never been a gentle man, either, I guess, but I set new records on wildness with you. It made me take a long look at myself. I didn't like what I saw."

Her hands linked together and she looked at them, not at him. "I don't want to talk about it, Dane."

He had to search for the right words. "Haven't you realized by now that most men...that a man who loved you would want to be gentle? That it wouldn't be like that with someone who loved you?"

"How do you know if someone cares?" she asked with bitter cynicism. She looked up at him. "I thought you did," she said huskily. "I thought you liked me, at least, but you made me afraid of you so that I wouldn't be a threat to your privacy. My father 38.Diana Palmer didn't want me, either. He landed me with my grandmother because he didn't want me." She shivered. "n.o.body ever wanted me...."

She lay back against the pillows, looking ten years older than she was. "Please go away, Dane. I'm too tired to fight anymore."

Why hadn't he known how she felt? After all these years, he still knew next to nothing about her. Of course she'd felt rejected when her father left her with her grandmother; more so because of all his affairs. And then he'd planned to marry Dane's mother, further iso- lating her. She'd wanted someone to love, and she'd had the mis- fortune to pick a man who didn't even know what it was, who'd known nothing but resentment and dislike all his life, a man with a failed marriage behind him and a crippled body to boot.

He grimaced at the defeated expression on her face. He felt re- sponsible for her anguish, as if he'd caused it. Certainly he'd added to it.

"Do you like horses?" he asked.

"I'm afraid of them."

"Only because you don't know much about them. When you're up to it, I'll teach you to ride."

Her eyes met his. "Don't do this to me," she said unsteadily.

"Please don't. I don't need pity."

He started to speak, but he didn't know what words to use. He drew in a long breath.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Try to rest."

She nodded. Her eyes closed, blocking him out. She wasn't going to let him get to her again. No matter what she had to do to protect herself, he wasn't getting a second shot at her!

Chapter Three.

The La.s.siter Bar-D was a working cattle ranch. Besides Jose Dom- inguez and Hardy, who were horse wrangler and cook, respectively, Dane employed a ranch manager, Beryl's husband Dan, and half a dozen cowhands and other a.s.sorted personnel necessary to keep the place running. One man did nothing but look after the purebred bulls. Another took care of the tanks used to water the cattle. Still another was a mechanic.

Tess hadn't really wanted to let Dane spirit her out of the hospital and down to his ranch, but she hadn't been strong enough to fight him. He'd cleared it with the doctor, had had her bags-packed by Helen-already in the car, and the minute she was released, had headed straight down to Branntville.

Tess was uneasy about the prospect of several days in Dane's company. He was acting strangely, and she was nervous-much more so than usual.

He'd never been much of a talker unless he had to socialize as part of his job, so the trip down to Branntville was undertaken in silence. Tess stared out the window, buried in her own thoughts and occupied with the twinges of pain she was still feeling from the wound in her arm.

"Is that a ranch?" she asked when they reached the outskirts of Branntville, her eyes on a huge white-fenced property with a black silhouette of a spur for a logo.

"Yes. Cole Everett and the Big Spur are known all over the state.

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Cole married his stepsister, Heather Shaw. They have three boys, all teenagers now."

"It's very big, isn't it?" she asked.

"Except for the Brannt Ranch, it's the biggest north of the King Ranch."

"Brannt Ranch? Is Branntville named for the people who live there?"