The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss
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“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 God, 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. “God 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 class. If she has any free time at all, she’s eating pizza with her friend Harold. She means 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 passed, 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 hell 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 cynical.”
“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!”
“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 nervously. “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 catch. “Or is there something more, in spite of the way I frightened you?”