Secret Sins (4 page)

At twenty-four, she was sweet as candy, as temperamental as a volcano, and just as
hot. And she was his.

He’d been claiming her since the evening he’d realized, to his soul, to the base of
his hardening dick, that she was a woman.

Six years.

For six years he’d done everything he could, fought every battle, cursed himself,
fought his desires, and ached for her.

She’d haunted his fantasies, invaded his dreams, and tonight, of all nights, had filled
his senses with a pleasure he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back from.

He’d told her to be certain what she wanted, because he knew once he got her in his
bed, escaping it might not be easy for her if that was what she eventually decided
she wanted. He was too hungry for her.

Fuck that, he was too damned horny for her.

The lust that raged through him where Anna was concerned was one that no other woman
could assuage. If another could, then he would have ensured it was taken care of before
now.

Before he touched her.

Before he tasted her.

Before he allowed himself to become addicted to the feel of her close to his chest,
in his arms, and somehow awakening hungers he’d never known he had.

Archer could feel the fact that Anna was home to stay tightening in every bone and
muscle of his body. She was a woman now, and he recognized that steely confidence
he had seen in her eyes. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. He’d take her into
his bed, but he would not let her into his heart—at least no more than she had managed
already. Damn it, a man had to draw the line somewhere if he wanted to preserve his
own sanity. In the meantime, he was going to ignore the voice in his head telling
him that it was already too late.

CHAPTER 2

Two weeks later

“I’m not going back to college.”

Anna tried to ignore the four sets of shocked gazes that stared back at her as she
stepped into the kitchen and walked to the coffeepot.

She’d made her declaration, and now she was going to make her stand.

“I didn’t hear you right,” her father replied coolly. “I could have sworn I just heard
you say you were throwing away thousands of dollars already paid, on tuition alone,
to one of the finest colleges in the state of California.”

“Not to mention one of the most secluded, out-of-the-way colleges on the face of the
planet,” she retorted. “One I first begged you not to send me to, and have since demanded
to be able to leave for another.”

“And that doesn’t count the apartment, furnishing it, clothing and food allowances—”

“Oh yeah, and that’s so much money in that dried-up little corner of the world,” she
snorted. “Especially considering your so-called apartment is one owned by the school
itself.”

She would have given her father’s argument much more respect if it weren’t for the
fact that the college she was attending, as exclusive and high-priced as it was, was
little more than a home for wayward children who gave little respect to the fact that
their parents only wanted a future for them.

It was all but a prison.

And why was she there?

She hadn’t figured that one out yet.

She was three years through a four-year program, and she still couldn’t make sense
of her family’s choice for that college.

What she had done, though, was cram those four years into three, and had the degree
she had been sent there to attain in business management and consulting.

“Not to mention the fact that Jacques Dermonde’s offer of a position at his company
in France is dependent on the completion of those courses,” he continued.

“And it also doesn’t take into account the fact that I hated France when we visited
it, and no consideration is given to the fact that I’ve said countless times that
I refuse to work there. Especially for a man who forced his daughter into marriage
with a man twice her age, and considers women no more than children who have to be
controlled and fondled as he pleases.”

And what had ever made her parents believe she would allow herself to be controlled
by anyone, besides themselves? And only then because of her love for them.

Pouring a mug of coffee she turned back to her family and felt her stomach clench
in dread and trepidation.

This wasn’t the reaction she had expected.

There was no warmth, amusement, or even resignation in their gazes. For a moment,
before she could turn her head away, Anna was even certain she’d seen rising fear
building in her mother’s eyes.

“Lisa.” Her gran’mama, Genoa Corbin, addressed Anna’s mother as she rose slowly to
her feet, reaching for the cane that sat by her chair. “You and I should let John
and her father handle this.”

Lisa rose to her feet and Anna noticed her mother’s hands shaking.

“Yes, run away, Momma. This is, of course, the Middle Ages rather than the twenty-first
century and I’m certain none of your business,” Anna retorted painfully.

“Have some respect for your mother, Anna,” her grandfather snapped, slapping her emotions
with the brutal chastisement. “I raised you better than that.”

“Did you, Grandfather?” Straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin in determination,
she faced him squarely. She hadn’t called him Gran’pop for several years now, for
a reason. “You raised me to stand up for myself until I was nine, then you shipped
me off and never did more than let me know which exotic location we’d be vacationing
in during my breaks, despite my pleas that I be allowed to come home, just for a little
while.”

“And here you are! Just look how you’ve repaid me for that,” he accused her, his tone
forbidding and bleak.

“Anna,” her father snapped. “Stop acting like a spoiled brat. You will return to school
today.”

“No, Father, I won’t. I’ve had the dean’s letters to the ranch collected before they
ever left the school for the past three years. You’ve only been sent what I wanted
you to see. I graduated before showing up here last week. I won’t be going back. If
you and Grandfather won’t let me work with you here on the ranch, then I’ll find a
job in town.”

“No one will hire you,” her father promised her.

It wasn’t just anger that made her father’s voice hoarse, vibrating with a rough,
dark emotion. It was indeed fear, just as it had been in her mother’s eyes.

“They already have,” she stated quietly, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’ve
been hired as assistant to Mikhail Resnova at the Sweetrock offices of Brute Force.”

She could have cut the tension in the room with a butter knife as pure terror seemed
to flash in her father’s eyes.

Brute Force was her cousins’ business. Rafer, Logan, and Crowe Callahan were equal
partners along with Ivan and Mikhail Resnova in the security venture.

“What are you scared of, Dad?” Forcing the question past her lips was one of the hardest
things she had ever done. And she wouldn’t have asked if it weren’t for the fact that
she knew he was frightened of something.

“Of your determination to ruin your life and your future,” he stated, his voice still
hoarse. “I can’t believe you pulled this, Anna.”

But there was more. She knew there was more. She could see it in his eyes. Just as
she could see the fear and desperation in his expression.

Anna shook her head. “Working on the family ranch, or for my cousins in town, is not
the destruction of my life or my future,” she informed them. “And neither will any
other dream I have. Dreams I deserve, Dad. I don’t deserve to be locked up in a college
for wayward children, nor have I deserved to be separated from my family since I was
nine years old.”

She’d hated that. She still couldn’t forget it. Nothing could ever hurt her as much
as being taken from her family had broken her heart.

She’d been jerked from the home and the family she loved, and placed in private schools.
She had called home when her fear of the dark had overwhelmed her, and they had refused
to come get her.

She had cried, she had begged, she had demanded, and still they had refused.

“I’m tired of begging,” she told them when neither man spoke. “I’m not going back,
and I refuse to beg further. I haven’t been a part of this family since I was nine
years old, and I refuse to give you the courtesy of having any say in my future any
longer. I’m staying in Corbin County, whether you like it or not.”

“No, you will not.” It was her grandfather who rose to his feet. “Fine, you’ve graduated
without telling us, but that doesn’t mean you’ll work for anyone in this County or
in the state of Colorado without my permission. You can take the job in France or
you can leave with nothing but the clothes on your back and see how easy it is to
feed yourself with nothing more than that. And don’t expect that no-account cousin
of yours to do anything but laugh in your face. Because, by God, he hates us all.”

And if it had been only anger in his gaze, something other than that flash of terror
that filled his eyes, then she could have hated him. She could have allowed the years
of desertions, the dark, lonely nights and even more desolate days to feed the anger
growing inside her.

She had no friends but one. She hadn’t had family to depend upon. She’d just been
alone in one private school after another, with each move, each year until she swore
she couldn’t bear another.

If she had seen disinterest or just anger in her family’s eyes, in their faces, then
she could have hated them as she wanted to.

That wasn’t what she saw, but it wasn’t enough to hold back her own anger.

“Disowning another grandchild, are you, Grandfather?” She gave a facsimile of a mocking
laugh, but nothing could cover the pain spilling from her. “Why doesn’t that surprise
me?”

“If that’s what I have to do,” he snarled.

“Dad!” Her father’s tone was a shocked warning as he spoke to his own father.

“She’s been pushing for this for years,” her grandfather snapped. “She’s been begging
for it. Always fighting over the fact that we preferred to meet her for a nice vacation
rather than having her come here. Always running her mouth about her lack of family.
Her lack of consideration in everything we gave her—”

“What did you give me?” she cried out painfully. “An education? Clothes? That’s all
you gave me.”

“And just exactly what did you think we owed you?” he growled back.

“You owed me a family,” Anna yelled with overwhelming fury, so filled with pain and
anger she was shaking now. “You owed me the same love and devotion you gave me before
I turned nine. That was exactly what you owed me. That, or to tell me what the hell
I did to make you hate me so much.”

The tears fell then. They filled her eyes, blurred her vision, and ran until she wondered
if she would ever be able to stop them.

“Why?” she sobbed desperately. “Why do you hate me?”

“God, Anna, we don’t hate you.” Her father came out of his chair in a burst of anger
so ferocious even Anna stepped back. “Why can’t you just accept that we’re doing our
best to protect you?”

She shuddered, shaking with her sobs as she faced him.

“Because I don’t need to be protected from living. I need a life, Dad,” she cried,
the pain building, burning inside her until she was terrified it would consume her.
“Is that so hard to understand?”

“Then get out there and get you a life.” Her grandfather waved his arm to the door.
“But don’t expect it to be easy. I promise you, no one in Corbin County will dare
help you. Especially Crowe Callahan.”

“Like no one helped him, Rafer, and Logan?” she sneered back at him. “I always thought
he must have done something so vile, so unforgivable, to have been denied your love.
But that’s not the truth, is it, John Corbin? What they say in town, that you punish
him because you can’t punish his mother for leaving and allowing herself to die in
that car accident all those years ago, is true.”

His face spasmed with pain. An agony unlike any she had ever seen filled his face.

“And if she had done as I asked, then she would be alive now,” he stated, his voice
hoarse as another sob shook her body. “I won’t make that same mistake with you, Anna.
You can start packing for France, or you can be cut out of our lives just as easy
as David Callahan’s little brat was.”

Pain filled his voice and struck at her heart, but it was too late to back down. She
had made her stand, just as her grandfather had now done.

“Is this how you feel as well, Dad?” she asked bitterly. “Would you cut me out of
your life so easily?”

His jaw tightened as he refused to speak.

As far as Anna was concerned, that was answer enough.

“I’ll get my things and leave.”

“No you won’t.” The fury in her grandfather’s voice made her pause. “You haven’t bought
a damned thing you call your own. Everything you have someone else has bought for
you. You can leave this house the same way you came into it, with nothing. You should
be thankful I let you have the clothes on your back,” he reminded her. “That’s all
you leave with and you can count yourself lucky that I’m allowing you that much.”

Her chest tightened, her heart constricting until she was certain she would die from
the agony tearing through her.

This was her grandfather.

She’d loved him all her life.

He’d spoiled her when she was a child, swore he would protect and love her, then he
had sent her away, swearing it was for her own good.

He’d lied to her, cheated her out of a childhood, and now, he was attempting to cheat
her out of the rest of her life.

“Daddy?” she asked. “Are you going to let him do this?”

Not even her purse? Or the car they had bought her for her sixteenth birthday?

The one she had so rarely gotten to drive?

None of her clothes, or her shoes?

Nothing of the mementos bought for her through the years that she treasured so much,
not even a picture of her parents?