Against the Rules (14 page)

“No. Never. Listen to me,” he growled. “What I saw, what I heard, what I went though will never go any further. It stops with me. I'm handling it; maybe not the way the textbook reads, but I'm handling it my way. It took years before I could sleep an entire night without waking up with my guts in knots, my throat tight with other people's screams. I can do it now, the dreams only come every so often, but I'm not about to lay this on someone else.”

“There are organizations of veterans—”

“I know, but I've always been a lone wolf, and I'm already over the worst. I can look at a tree now; I can let someone walk up to my back. It's finished, Cat. I don't wallow in it.”

“It's not finished if it still bothers you,” she said quietly.

He drew a ragged breath. “I got out of it alive. Don't ask for anything else.” A soundless laugh moved his chest as he walked even farther away. “And I didn't even ask for that. At first...God, at first I prayed every night, every morning. Just get me out alive, let me get through this alive, don't let me be blown into obscene little red pieces of meat. Then, after about six months, the prayer changed. Every morning I prayed that I wouldn't make it out alive. I didn't want to come back. No human being should have to live through that and still face the sunrise every morning. I wanted to die. I tried to. I took chances that no sane person would take, but I made it anyway. One day I was in the jungle, and the next I was in Honolulu, and those damned fools were walking under trees, letting people walk up to them, smiling and laughing and staring at me, some of them, like I was some kind of freak. Oh, hell...” he finished, his voice sliding away.

Cathryn felt something on her face and brushed the back of her hand over her cheek, surprised to feel dampness. Tears? She had been too young to understand the horror of Vietnam while it was happening; but she had read about it since, had seen pictures, and she could remember Rule's face the day her father had brought him to the ranch. Rule's battered, bitter face, the silence of him, was her picture of Vietnam.

But while she had only a picture, he had the reality of his memories and his dreams.

A low cry came from her as she rushed across the floor to him, wrapping her arms about him so tightly that he couldn't shove her away again. He didn't try to; he enclosed her in the tempered steel of his embrace, bending his head down to rest it on hers. He felt the liquid grief on her face as it touched his chest, and he dried her cheeks with the palm of his hand. “Don't cry for me,” he muttered, kissing her hard, almost brutally. “Give me comfort, not pity.”

“What do you want?” she whimpered.

“This.” He lifted her high, kissing her again and again, stealing her breath until she was dizzy and clung to him with her arms and legs, afraid that she would fall if he relaxed his hold. But he didn't let her fall. He lowered her slowly, slithering her body along his torso, and she cried out as she felt his entry.

“I want this,” he said harshly, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs. “I want to bury myself in you. I want you to go wild beneath me when I'm making love to you, and you do, don't you? Tell me, Cat. Tell me you go wild.”

She buried her face in his neck, sobbing with the fire he had ignited with his powerful, driving loins. “Yes,” she moaned, giving in to any demand he made.

The hot rush of delirium swept over them simultaneously. He went down with her to the floor and she didn't even notice the hardness or her discomfort as he surged against her. At last the sweet, hot pulsing of his body had stopped and he lifted her onto the bed, once again cradling her soft body to him until she slept.

When she awoke again it was a sunny morning and Rule still lay beside her, a faint smile gentling the hard contours of his face as he watched her as she stretched and realized that she wasn't alone. She looked at him and gave him a sleepy smile. Then he drew her to him with one hand on her waist and without a word made love to her again.

When it was over he lifted his head and dared her in a velvet rasp, “Marry me.”

Cathryn was so stunned that she could only gape at him.

A rueful smile curved his hard, chiseled lips, but he repeated the words. “Marry me. Why do you look so surprised? I've planned to marry you since you were...oh, fifteen or so. Since the day you slapped my face and got your little fanny tanned for your effort, as a matter of fact.”

Suddenly terrified of this new demand he was making on her, Cathryn sat up away from his arms and said in a shaking voice, “I can't even decide if I should stay here or not, and now you want me to marry you. How can I decide about that?”

“That part's simple,” he assured her, drawing her down beside him again. “Don't think about it; don't worry about it. Just do it. We may fight every inch of the way to bed every night, but once we get there it will be worth every bruise and scratch. I can promise you that you'll never crawl into a cold bed at night.”

Cathryn was shaken to the core. Oh, God, she wanted him so much! But despite the drugging intensity of his lovemaking, he would share nothing of himself with her except for the physical part of a relationship. She had all but begged him to trust her and he had shoved her away.

Shudders of reaction began racing through her. “No!” she cried wildly, afraid most of all of the powerful temptation to blindly do as he said and marry him despite everything. She wanted him so much that it was terrifying, but he hadn't said that he loved her, only that he had planned to marry her. He had planned everything. He made no secret of his devotion to the ranch. He was obsessed with it, perhaps to the point that he would marry simply to keep it under his domination. Last night she had seen part of what Vietnam had done to him and she understood more fully why he clung so fiercely to this ranch. Hot tears suddenly scalded her face and she almost screamed, “I can't! I can't even think when you're around! You promised you wouldn't touch me, but you broke your word! I'm going back to Chicago. I'm leaving today. I can't stand being pressured like this!”

She had never been more miserable, and she was made more so by his tight-lipped silence as he dressed and left her room. Cathryn lay rigidly, occasionally wiping at the tears that managed to escape despite her desperate efforts at control. She ached in both body and mind, battered by the fierce, untamed need for him that she could neither control nor understand. She had wanted him to leave her alone, but now she lay feeling as if part of her had been torn away. She had to grind her teeth together in concentration to prevent herself from creeping down the hall to his room and crawling into the strength of his embrace. She
had
to leave. If she didn't get away from his influence, he would use her weakness for him as a means of binding her to him permanently, and she would never know if he wanted her for herself or for the ranch.

It was obvious that Rule desired her physically. Why not? She wasn't a raving beauty, but she was passable in most areas and many people found her leggy grace and exotic coloring attractive. Rule was a normal male with all the normal male needs and responses, so there was no reason why he shouldn't want her. It was when she delved below the surface that she became overwhelmed by doubts and possibilities, none of them pleasant.

As well as she knew Rule, as intimate as she was with every line of his body and nuance of his expression and voice, she was violently aware that he kept a great deal of himself locked away. He was a man who had lived through hell and emerged from the fires with nothing of value left, no illusions or dreams to buffer him from the stark reality of what he had experienced; and he had returned “home” to find that in fact he had no home, that emotionally he had been cast adrift. The hand that Ward Donahue had extended to him had literally saved his life, and from that moment he had poured his devotion into the ranch that had sheltered him and allowed him to rebuild the blasted ruin of his life.

She could marry him, yes, but she would never know if he had married her for love of herself or for love of the ranch that came with her. She was a package deal, and for the first time in her life she wished that the ranch weren't hers. Leaving wouldn't solve the problem for her, but it would give her the opportunity to decide in a rational way whether she could marry Rule and live with him in any sort of serenity, able to accept that she would never know for certain. She couldn't be rational around Rule; he reduced her to the most basic responses.

It was an old problem, one that heiresses were traditionally troubled with: Did he want her or her possessions? In this case it wasn't a question of money but of security and dark emotions buried so deep in Rule's subconscious that perhaps even he wasn't aware of his motivation.

Cathryn finally got out of bed and listlessly began packing. She had barely begun when the door opened and Rule stood there.

He was dressed in fresh clothing, his expression blank, but lines of weariness scored his face. He said evenly, “Come riding with me.”

She looked away. “I have to pack—”

“Please,” he interrupted, and she quivered at hearing that unaccustomed word from him. “Come riding with me this one last time,” he coaxed. “If I can't convince you to stay, then I'll take you to wherever you want to go to catch a flight out of Texas.”

She sighed, rubbing her forehead in an agitated gesture. Why couldn't she just make a clean break? She had to be the world's biggest glutton for punishment. “All right,” she gave in. “Let me get dressed.”

For a moment he looked disinclined to leave, his dark eyes telling her that that was a silly thing to say to a man who had made love to her as he had the night before. But then he nodded and closed the door. With her senses acutely aware of him, she felt his presence and knew that he was leaning against the wall outside her room. Quickly she dressed and brushed the worst of the tangles from her hair. When she opened the door, he straightened and extended his hand to her, then let it drop before she could decide whether to take it or not.

They walked in silence to the stables, where they saddled the horses. The early morning was pleasantly cool and the horses were full of energy, impatient with the slow walk that the firm hands on the reins held them to. After several minutes of silence Cathryn kneed her horse closer to Rule's and said abruptly, “What did you want to talk about?”

His eyes were shadowed by the battered black hat that he habitually wore low as protection against the fierce Texas sun, and she could read nothing in the portion of his face that was exposed to her gaze. “Not now,” he refused. “Let's just ride and look at the land.”

She was content enough to do that, loving the well-tended look of the pastures, and aching inside at the thought of leaving all of this again. The fencing was sturdy and in good repair; all of the outbuildings were clean and freshly painted. Rule's stewardship had been nothing short of outstanding. Even when her resentment had been at its hottest she had never doubted his feelings for the land. She had acknowledged that even in the depths of adolescent confusion.

They were away from the paddocks and barns now, and crossing a pasture. Rule reined in his horse and nodded in the direction of the ranch buildings. “I've been holding this place for you,” he said harshly. “Waiting for you to come back to it. I can't believe you don't want it.”

She swallowed a flash of anger and cried indignantly, “Not want it! How can you think that? I love this place; it's my home.”

“Then live here; make it your home.”

“I've always wanted to do that,” she said, bitterness lacing her tone. “It's just that...oh, damn you, Rule, you must know that you're the reason I've stayed away!”

His mouth twisted as her bitterness was reflected back at her. “Why? Do you believe everything that was said about me when I came back from Nam?”

“Of course not!” she denied hotly. “Nobody does!”

“Some did. I have a vivid recollection of several people trying their level best to make me pay in blood for everything they thought I'd done.” His face was stony, cold, as he brought one of his black memories up into the fresh and sunny morning.

Cathryn shuddered and reached out to grasp his muscular forearm, bared by the rolled-up sleeve of his denim work shirt. “It was never anything like that, believe me! I...at the time, I resented you so much that I couldn't think straight.”

“Do you still resent me?” he demanded.

“No.” The confession was made in a low voice; she looked at him with troubled, doubtful eyes. Somehow she couldn't just tell him that she was afraid that he wanted the ranch more than he wanted her. She knew that if she exposed her doubts to him, he would be able to talk her out of them using her weakness for him to railroad her into doing whatever he wanted. She didn't just want him physically. She wanted his emotional commitment, too.

“Will you reconsider?” he rasped. “Will you think about staying?”

She had to force herself to look away, to keep him from seeing the longing in her eyes. If only she
could
stay! If only she could be content with what he was offering her, what she suspected was all he was capable of offering to any woman. But she wanted so much more than that, and she was afraid that she would destroy herself if she tried to compromise on that. “No,” she whispered.

He danced Redman around to face her and closed his gloved hand over her reins. His dark face was taut with frustration, his jaw set in a grim line. “Okay, so you leave. What if you're pregnant? What then? Are you going to insist on handling that on your own? Will you even tell me if I'm going to be a father, or will you just get rid of my baby and pretend that it never existed? When will you know?” he said fiercely.

The words, the idea, stunned her almost as deeply as his unexpected proposal of marriage had done a few hours before. Helplessly she stared at him.