Two Alone (26 page)

"Home."

"To Rogers Gap?"

"Yeah. Back
t
o where
I
belong. I've got a ranch to look after, No telling what shape I'll find i
t
in when I get there." Almo
st
as an afterthought he glanced down at her right leg. "Wh
at
about your leg? Is it going to be all right?"

"Eventually," she replied dully.
He's leaving. He's going.
A
w
ay
from me. Possibly forever.
"It's going to take a series of operation'
.
The first of them is being done tomorrow."

"I hope I didn't do you more harm than good."

Her throat was tight with emotion. "You didn't."

"Well,
I
guess this is goodbye." He edged toward the door, trying not to make it look like an escape.

"Maybe sometime I can drive up to Rogers Gap and say hello. You never can tell when I might gee up that way."

"Yeah, sure. That'd be grea
t
.
" His forced smile told her oth
erwise.

"How..
.how often do you come to L.A.?"

"Not very often," he was honest enough to say. "Well, so long, Rusty." Turning on the heels of his new shoes, he reached for the door handle.

"Cooper, wait!" He turned back. She was si
tt
ing up in bed, poised to chase after him if necessary. "Is this how it's going to end?"

He nodded curtly.

"It can't. Not after what we've been through together."

"It has to."

She shook her head so adamantly
t
hat her hair flew in every direction. "You don't fool me anymore. You're being insensitive to protect yourself. You're fighting it. I know you are. You want to hold m
e
just as much as I want to hold you."

His jaw knotted as he ground his teeth together. At his sides, his hands formed fists. He warred with himself for several Seconds before losing the battle.

He lunged across the room and pulled her roughly into his arms. Lowering himself onto the side of the bed, he hugged her against him tightly. With their arms wrapped around each other, they rocked
t
oge
t
her. His face was buried in the cinnamon-colored hair. Hers was nes
tl
ed against his
t
hroat.

"Rusty, Rusty."

Thrilling
t
o the anguish in his voice, she told him, "I couldn't go to sleep last night without a sedative
. I
kept listening for your breathing, I missed being held in your arms."

"I missed feel
ing your bottom against my lap.
"

He bent his head at the same moment she lifted hers and thei
r
mouths sought each other. Their kiss was desperate with desire. He plowed all ten fingers through her hair and held her
head
still while he made love to her open mouth with his tongue.

"I wanted you so bad last night,
I
thought I'd die," he groaned when they moved apart.

"You didn't want to be separated from m
e
?"

"Not that way."

"Then why didn't you answer me when I called out
t
o you a
t
the airport? You heard me, didn'
t
you?"

He looked chagrined, but nodded his head yes. "I couldn't be a performer in that circus,
Rusty
. I couldn't get away from there fast
enou
gh.
Wh
en
I
came
home
from
Nam, I was treated like a hero." He rubbed a strand of her hair between his fingers while he reflected on the painful past. "
I
didn't feel like a he
ro
I'd been living in hell. In the bowels of hell. Some of the things I'd had to do... Well,
t
hey w
e
r
e
n'
t
very heroic. They didn't deserve a spotlight and accolades.
I
didn't deserve them. I just wanted to be left alone so I could forget it."

He tilted her head back and pierced her with a silvery-gray stare. "I don't deserve or want a spotlight now, either. I did what was necessary to save our lives. Any man would have."

She touched his mustache lovingly. "Not any man, Cooper."

He shrugged away the compliment. "I've had more experience at surviving than most, that's all."

"You just won't take the credit you deserve, will you?"

"Is that what you want, Rusty? Credit for surviving?"

She thought of her father. She would have enjoyed hearing a few words of praise for her bravery. Instead he had talked about Jeff's Boy Scout escapade and told her how
w
ell her brother had reacted to a po
t
entially fatal situation. Comparing her to Jeff hadn't been malicious on her father's part. He hadn't meant to point out how she fell short of Jeff's example. But that's what it had amounted to. What would it take, she wondered, to win her father's approval?

But for some reason, winning his approval didn't seem as important as it once had been. In fact, it didn't seem important at all. She was far more interested in what Cooper
t
hought of her.

"I don'
t
want credit, Cooper. I want..." She stopped s
h
or
t
of saying "you." Instead, she laid her cheek against his chest. "Why didn't you come after me? Don't you want me anymore?"

He laid his hand over her breast and stroked it
w
i
t
h his fingertips. "Yes, I want you." The need that made his voice sound like tearing cloth wasn't strictly physical.

Rusty
perceived the dep
t
h of his need because she felt it
t
oo. It came ou
t
of an emptiness
t
hat gnawed at her when he wasn't there. It caused her own imploring inflection. "Then why?"

"I didn't follow you last night because I wanted to speed up the inevitable."

"The inevitable?"

"Rusty," he whispered, "this sexual dependency we feel for each other is textbook normal. It's common among people who have survived a crisis together. Even hostages and kidnap victims sometimes begin
t
o feel an unnatural affection for their captors."

"I know all that. The Stockholm syndrome. But this is different."

"Is it?" His brows lowered skeptically. "A child loves whoever feeds him. Even a wild animal becomes friendly with someone who leaves food out for it. I took care of you. I
t
was only human nature
t
hat you attach more significance—"

Suddenly and angrily, she pushed him away. Her hair was a vibrant halo of indignation, her eyes brigh
t
with challenge. "Don't you dare reduce what happened between us with psychological patter. It's crap. What I feel for you is real."

"I never said it wasn't real." Her feis
t
iness exci
t
ed him. He liked her best when she was defiant. He yanked her against him. "We've always had this going for us." He cupped her breast again and impertinently swept his thumb across the
ti
p.

She wilted, murmuring a weak "Don't," which he disregarded. He continued to fondle her. Her eyes slid shut.

"We get close. I get hard. You get creamy. Every damned time. It happened the first time we laid eyes on each other in the airplane. Am I right?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"I wanted you then, before we ever left the ground." "But you didn't even smile, or speak to me, or encourage me to speak to you."

"That's right."

"Why?" She couldn't take any more of his caresses and stay sensible. She moved his hand aside. "Tell me why."

"Because I guessed then what I know for fact now: we live worlds apart. And
I’
m not referring to geography."

"I know what you're talking about. You think I'm silly and superficial, like those friends of mine you just met. I'm not!"

She laid her hands on his forearms and appealed to him earnestly. "They irritated me, too. Do you know why? Because 1 saw myself-—the way I used to be. I was judging them just as you did me when we first met.

"But please be tolerant toward them. Toward me. This is Beverly Hills. Nothing is real. There are areas of this city
I
couldn't re
l
ate to. The Gawrylows' cabin was beyond my realm of comprehension. But I'm changed.
I
really am. I'm no
t
like them anymore,"

"You never were, Rusty. I thought so. I know better now." He framed her face between his hands. "But that's the life you know. It's the crowd
y
ou run with.
I
couldn't. Wouldn't. Would n
o
t even want to try. And you wouldn't belong in my life."

Hurt by the painful truth of what he was saying, she reacted with anger and threw off his hands. "Your life! What life? Shut away from the rest of the world? Alone and lonely? Using bitterness like an armor? You call that a life? You're right, Cooper.
I
cou
l
dn'
t
live like tha
t
. The chip on my shoulder would be too heavy to bear."

His lower lip narrowed
t
o a thin, harsh line beneath his mustache. She knew she'd hit home, but there was no victory in i
t
.

"So there you have it," he said. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. In bed we'
r
e great, but we'd never make a life together."

"Because you're too damned stubborn to try! Have you even considered a compromise?"

"No. I don't want any part of this scene." He spread his hands wide to encompass the luxurious room and all that lay beyond the wide window.

Rusty aimed an accusing finger at him. "You're a snob."

"A sn
o
b?"

"Yes, a snob. You snub society because you feel superior to the masses. Superior and righteous because of the war and your imprisonment. Scornful because you see all that's wrong with the world. Locked up there on your solitary moun
t
ain, you play God by looking down on all ol us who have the guts to tolerate each other despite our human failings."

"It's not like that," he ground out.

"Isn't it? Aren't you just a
t
rifle self-righteous and judgmental? If there's so much wrong with our world, if you ridicule ii that much, why don'
t
you do something to change it? What ar
e
you accomplishing by withdrawing
fr
om it? Society didn't shun you. You shunned it."

"I didn't leave her until she—"

"Her?"

Cooper's face cleared of all emotion and became as wooden and smooth as a mask. The light in his eyes flickered out. The
y
became hard and implacable.

Shocked,
Rusty
laid a hand against her pounding heart.
A woman was at the source of Cooper
’
s cynicism.
Who? When? A hundred questions raced through her mind. She wanted to ask all of them, but for the time being she was occupied only with enduring his icy, hostile stare. He was furious with himsel
f
and with her. She had goaded him into resurrecting something hi had wanted to keep dead and buried.

Her overactive heart pumped jealousy through her system as rich and red as her blood. Some woman had wielded enough influence over Cooper to alter the course of his life. He mi
g
h
t
have been a happy-go-lucky chap before this unnamed she-wolf got her claws into him.
F
or his bitterness to be this lasting, she must have been some woman. He was still feeling her influence. Had he loved her that much? Rusty asked herself dismally.

A man like Cooper Landry wouldn't go long without having a woman. But Rusty had imagined his affairs to be fleeting, physical gratification and little else. It had never occurred ro her that he'd been seriously involved with someone. But he had been, and her departure from his life had been wrenching and painful.