Praise for the novels of
New York Times bestselling author
DIANA PALMER

“A handsome rancher-tycoon and his shy, sheltered stepsister fall in love in Palmer’s latest romantic melodrama (after Fearless) that’s long on humid heat.”

—Publishers Weekly on Heartless

“Palmer’s talent for character development and ability to fuse heartwarming romance with nail-biting suspense shine in Outsider.”

—Booklist

“A gentle escape mixed with real-life menace for fans of Palmer’s more than 100 novels.”

—Publishers Weekly on Night Fever

“The ever popular and prolific Palmer has penned another sure hit.”

—Booklist on Before Sunrise

“Nobody does it better.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly…heartwarming.”

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

“Sensual and suspenseful.”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

Renegade
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RENEGADE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS A LAZY MONDAY MORNING. Not much was going on at the Jacobsville, Texas, Police Department. Three patrol officers were fixing coffee at the small refreshment table in the main lobby. A sheriff’s deputy had stopped by to drop off a warrant. A local citizen was writing out a statement against a perpetrator who’d just been brought in by one of the patrol officers. The secretary who usually sat at reception was missing.

“That’s it. That is it! I don’t have to work here. There are jobs going right now at the Save-A-Lot grocery store, and I am going right over to put in my application!”

Heads turned at the unfamiliar sound of the police chief’s secretary yelling at the top of her lungs. There was a quick muffled reply, and then the sound of some thing metallic hitting the floor. Hard.

A furious, spiky-haired teenaged girl in a short skirt and deep-cut blouse sprinkled with glitter came stalking down the hall, eyes flashing fire, long earrings jangling like alarms. Men in uniforms moved quickly aside. She went to her desk, picked up her overstuffed purse, and started for the front door.

A tall, darkly handsome man in the chief’s uniform came down the hall just as she reached the door. His hair and clothes were liberally covered with coffee grounds, pieces of discarded tape, and two sticky Post-it notes, while a tissue was stuck to the top of a big, highly polished black shoe. There was another Post-it clinging to the long black ponytail at his nape.

“Was it something I said?” Cash Grier wondered aloud.

The teenager, whose lipstick was black, like her fingernail polish, groaned under her breath and stalked out the glass door, shutting it furiously behind her.

The uniformed officers tried valiantly not to laugh. Many sounded as if they’d just developed bad coughs. The man filling out the statement almost choked with mirth.

Cash glared at them. “Go ahead. Laugh. I can get another secretary anytime I want one!”

Judd Dunn, his assistant chief, was lounging against the counter, his black eyes twinkling. “That was the second one since you were appointed chief.”

“She worked in a grocery store before she came here,” Cash muttered, removing sticky things and coffee grounds from his immaculate uniform. “She only got this job because her uncle, Ben Brady, is the acting mayor and he said I’d never get funding for those new bulletproof vests I need if she didn’t get hired.” He sighed angrily. “He’s shady, that man. He wouldn’t be the acting mayor if Jack Herman hadn’t had a heart attack and stepped down. I have to put up with Brady until next May when we get a special election to choose Herman’s successor.”

Judd listened without comment as a scowling Cash continued ranting. “The city election won’t come too soon to suit me,” Cash snapped. “Brady’s giving me fits about making drug cases, and he won’t listen to any ideas about improvements in our department. They say Eddie Cane’s going to run for mayor against him.”

“He was the best mayor we ever had and I think he’ll win,” Judd said.

“More’s the pity we have to wait until May to vote Brady out.” Cash winced as he pulled the sticky note from his ponytail. “If he suggests a new secretary to replace that last one, I’m resigning.”

“You’ll have to find somebody to replace her, and quick, before he finds you a new candidate,” Judd ventured. “If you can get anybody sane to work for you.”

“I’ll put an ad in the paper, and women will trample us applying for the opportunity just to be in the same room with me!” Cash said.

“Maybe you should just take some time off and calm down,” Judd recommended. “The Christmas holidays are coming up.” He stared at Cash intently. “You could take a trip.”

Cash lifted an eyebrow. “I took one last month, with you, to that premiere in New York.”

“Tippy said you could come back whenever you liked,” Judd pointed out with a wicked grin, referring to the model-turned-actress Tippy Moore, the “Georgia Firefly” of modeling fame. “Her young brother liked you. He’ll probably be home from military school on holiday.”

Cash was reluctant to take the trip. The model had really gotten to him once he realized that she wasn’t the vain, vampy woman he’d first thought. Her vulnerabilities appealed to him in ways her blatant flirting hadn’t.

“I guess I could phone and ask her if she meant the invitation,” he said.

“Good man,” Judd said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You can get on the next flight out, and I can sit at your desk and be acting chief!”

Cash was getting suspicious. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that squad car that you keep trying to talk me into? There’s a city council meeting next week…”

“They’ll postpone it for the holidays,” Judd assured him. “I would never try to talk the city council into a squad car you don’t really want. Honest.”

Cash didn’t trust that gleaming smile. Judd was like him. He rarely smiled unless he was up to something or in a temper.

“Much less hire a secretary before you get back,” Judd added, not meeting Cash’s eyes.

“Oh, that’s it,” Cash said at once. “That’s it. You’ve got somebody in mind. You’re going to stick me with some retired woman colonel from the army or another conspiracy theorist like the secretary we had when my cousin Chet Blake was chief?”

“I don’t know any out-of-work mercenaries,” Judd said innocently.

“Or any ex-colonels?”

He shrugged. “Maybe one or two. Eb Scott has a cousin…”

“No!”

“You haven’t met her…”

“I’m not going to meet her! I’m the chief. See this?” He pointed at his badge. “I fight crime. I do not fight old women!”

“She’s not old. Exactly.”

“If you hire anybody before I get back, I will fire her the minute the plane lands! In fact, I won’t leave town!” Cash threatened.

Judd shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He studied his clean fingernails. “I hear the sister of the planning commissioner wants a crack at you. She may ask the acting mayor for a recommendation.”

Cash felt hunted. The planning commissioner, a delightful and gentle man, had a favorite sister who also had a crush on Cash. She was thirty-six, twice divorced, wore see-through blouses and was a hundred pounds overweight. The planning commissioner doted on her. He was also the best dentist anywhere around. Even an ex-black ops specialist like Cash couldn’t handle this kind of heat in a small town.

“When would the colonel like to start?” Cash asked through tight lips.

Judd burst out laughing. “I don’t know any colonels who want to work for you, but I’ll keep my eyes open…!” He moved just in time to avoid a roundhouse kick. “Hey, I’m a police officer! If you hit me, it’s a felony!”

“It is not,” Cash muttered, turning back toward his office. “It’s self-defense.”

“My lawyers will be in touch with you,” Judd called after him.

Cash threw him an insulting gesture over his head.

BUT ONCE HE WAS SAFELY back in his office, with the trash can refilled and repositioned, and the floor swept, he thought about what Judd had said. Maybe he was a little touchy lately. A few days off might make him less…irritable. Judd and Crissy’s two babies reminded him painfully of the life he’d lost.

Besides, Tippy Moore had a nine-year-old brother named Rory who idolized Cash. It had been a long time since anyone had looked up to him. He was used to curiosity, awe, even fear. Especially fear. The boy didn’t have a man in his life, except for his friends at military school. What would it hurt to spend a little time with him? After all, he didn’t have to tell them the story of his life. He winced, thinking of the only time he’d ever come clean about his past.

He sat down behind his desk and pulled a small ad dress book from his pocket. In it was a New York telephone number. He picked up his cell phone and dialed it.

It rang two times. Three times. Four times. He felt bitter disappointment. He started to put the receiver down. Suddenly, a sultry, soft voice came on the line. “This is the Moore residence,” it purred. “Sorry I’m not here. Please leave a brief message and a number. I’ll get back to you.” There was a beep.

“It’s Cash Grier,” he said.

He started to give his number when a breathless voice came on the line. “Cash!”

He laughed softly to himself. It showed that she’d dived for the phone before he could hang up. He was flattered.

“Yes, it’s me. Hello, Tippy.”

“How are you?” she asked. “Are you still in Jacobsville?”

“Still here. Except I’m chief of police now. Judd left the Texas Rangers and he’s working with me as assistant chief,” he added reluctantly. Tippy had been smitten with Judd, just as he himself had once been smitten with Judd’s wife, Christabel.

“So many changes.” She sighed. “And how is Christabel?”

“Very happy,” he replied. “She and Judd had twins.”

“Yes, I heard from them at Thanksgiving,” she confessed. “A girl and a boy, right?”

“Jared and Jessamina,” he said, smiling. The twins had captured their godfather’s heart the second he laid eyes on them in the hospital. Of course, Jessamina was Cash’s favorite and he made no bones about it. “Jessamina’s such a little doll. A head full of jet-black hair and her eyes are dark blue. They’ll change, of course.”

“How about Jared?” she probed, amused at his fascination with the little girl.

“Looks like his dad,” he replied. “Jared belongs to them, but Jessamina is mine. I told them so. Repeatedly.” He sighed. “It does no good, of course, they won’t give her to me.”

She laughed. It was like the sound of silver bells on a summer night. Her voice was one of her greatest as sets.

“How are you?”

“Working on a new film,” she told him. “We’ve just stopped shooting so that we can all have Christmas at home. I’m glad. It’s got a lot of physical stuff in it, and I’m out of shape. I’ll have to work out more if I’m going to have to be athletic.”

“What sort of physical stuff?” he wanted to know.

“Tucks and rolls, bouncing off trampolines, falls from high places, martial arts, that sort of thing,” she said, sounding tired. “I’m bruised all over. Rory’s going to pass out when he sees me. He says I’ve got no business doing rough stuff like this at my age.”

“At your age?” he asked, because he knew she was only twenty-six.

“I’m old,” she said. “Didn’t you know? From his perspective, I should be walking with a cane!”

“That puts me in my place,” he chuckled, mentally noting that he was twelve years her senior. “Is he coming home for Christmas?”

“Sure. He comes home every holiday. I have a nice little place here, near Fifth Street in the lower East Village, near a bookstore and a coffee shop. It’s very pleasant, for a big city.”

“I like a little more room.”

“You would.” She hesitated. “Are you in trouble or anything?”

He felt odd. “What do you mean?”

“Do you need me to do something for you?” she persisted.

He’d never had anyone offer. He didn’t know how to handle such a statement.

“I’m fine,” he bit off.

“Then why did you call…?”

“Not because I want anything,” he said, more harshly than he meant to. “You don’t think I might have called just because I wanted to know how you were?”

“Not really,” she confessed. “I didn’t make a great impression on people around Jacobsville while we were filming down there. Especially on you.”

“That was before Christabel got shot,” he reminded her. “You changed my mind in a split second when you stripped off that expensive sweater you were wearing without a second thought and used it to put pressure on her gunshot wound. You made a lot of friends that day.”

“Thanks,” she said, sounding shy.

“Listen, I thought I might come up to New York for a few days before Christmas,” he said. “Did you mean what you said, about the rain check? I could take you and Rory out on the town.”

He could hear the excitement in her voice. “Wow. That would make Rory’s day.”

“Is he there?”

“No. I have to take the train down to Maryland and pick him up at the academy. They won’t release him unless I sign him out. We had to arrange it that way to keep my mother from taking him to extort money from me.” She sounded bitter. “She knows how much money I’m making and she wants some. She and her boyfriend would do anything to get their hands on money for drugs.”

“Suppose I pick him up and bring him to New York for you?”

She hesitated. “You’d…do that?”

“Sure. I’ll photocopy my ID and fax it to the school. You can call them and verify who I am. Rory will recognize me.”

“It would be the thrill of his life,” she confessed. “He’s talked about nothing except you since you met at the premiere of my film last month.”

“I liked him, too. He’s honest.”

“I taught him that honesty was the most important part of character,” she said. “I’ve been lied to so much in my life that I value nothing more,” she added quietly.

“I know how you feel. Well, I’d planned to leave here on the nineteenth. Tell me how to get to the military academy,” he added, “and the address of your apartment and what time you want us there. And I’ll do the rest!”

JUDD WAS HIGHLY AMUSED at Cash’s animation and changed mood after the older man spoke with Tippy.

“You don’t smile much these days,” Judd said. “Nice to see that you remembered how.”

“Tippy’s brother’s at military school,” Cash said. “I’m going to pick him up on the way and drive him there.”

“Will your truck make it all the way to New York?” Judd chided, recalling the big black pickup that Cash drove around town. It was a nice one—but inexpensive—and it had some wear on it.

Cash looked oddly hesitant. “I have a car,” he said. “It’s garaged in Houston. I don’t drive it a lot, but I maintain it. It was for emergencies.”

“Now you’ve got me curious,” Judd said. “What sort of car?”

“It’s just a car,” Cash said, shrugging, too embarrassed to tell Judd what sort of car it really was. He never talked about his finances. “Nothing fancy. Listen, are you sure you can handle the work here while I’m gone?”

“I was a Texas Ranger.”

Cash grinned. “Yeah, but this is a hard job…!”

He moved out of the way just in time to avoid retribution.

“You wait,” Judd threatened with dancing eyes. “I’ll hire you the ugliest secretary east of the Brazos River!”

“You would,” Cash sighed. “Well, at least get me somebody who isn’t so skittish, would you?”

“Why exactly did she quit?”

Cash sighed. “The punk rocker was upset about not being allowed into my filing cabinet. I didn’t want to tell her about my baby python being in there temporarily, so I told her I kept top secret flying-saucer material in there.”

“That’s when she upended the trash can over your head,” Judd guessed.

Cash shook his head. “No, that was afterward. I told her the filing cabinet was locked for a purpose, and that she’d better stay out of it. I went out to talk to one of the patrol officers. While I was gone, she got a nail file and forced the lock. Mikey, the python, had squeezed out of the cage and was sitting up on top of the file folders when she pulled out the drawer. She screamed like a banshee and when I went running back to see what was the matter, she threw a pair of handcuffs at me! She accused me of booby-trapping the cabinet to upset her.”

“That explains the scream I heard,” Judd agreed. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to keep Mikey’s cage in the filing cabinet.”

“It was just for today. Bill Harris only gave him to me this morning and I didn’t have time to take him home. I put him in there until I got off work, so he wouldn’t frighten anybody who came into the office and saw him. I’m certainly taking him home this afternoon,” he said indignantly, “to make sure he doesn’t get traumatized any more than he already is!”

“The acting mayor’s niece is afraid of snakes. Imagine that,” Judd mused.

“It does strain the imagination,” Cash had to agree.

“You didn’t give her a reason to sue us, I hope?” his friend persisted.

Cash shook his head. “I just mentioned that I had Mikey’s dad in the other filing cabinet and asked if she’d like to meet him. That’s when she quit.” He smiled pleasantly.

“If you fire people, the city has to pay them unemployment. If they quit voluntarily, you don’t. So I helped her quit voluntarily,” he added with a grin.

“You villain,” Judd said, trying not to laugh.

“It’s not my fault. She had a king-sized crush on me. She thought if her uncle got her this job, she could hike up her skirt and throw out her chest and seduce me,” he said irritably. He frowned. “Maybe I should have filed a sexual harassment suit.”

“Oh, that would go over well with Ben Brady,” Judd said tongue in cheek.

“I’m tired of being chased around my desk by secretaries.”

“They’re called administrative assistants,” Judd said helpfully. “Not secretaries.”

“Give me a break!”

“That’s why I want you to go to New York.”

“I’ve got a pet to take care of,” Cash protested.

“You can take Mikey back over to Bill Harris before you leave town. He won’t mind taking care of your baby while you’re gone. You need a break. Honest.”

Cash sighed and slid his big hands into his pockets. “For once, I agree with you.” He hesitated. “If her uncle calls and asks why she left…”

“I won’t say a word about the snake. I’ll just tell him that you were having mental problems from being followed around by aliens all day,” Judd said complacently.

Cash gave him a dirty look and went back to work.

LATE THE NEXT DAY, Cash presented himself in the commandant’s office at the Cannae Military Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The name of the school was amusing to him, denoting as it did the monstrous defeat of mighty Rome at the hands of the Carthaginian guerilla, Hannibal.

The commandant, Gareth Marist, was known to him. He’d served with the man years before during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq.

They shook hands like brothers, which they were, under the skin. Few men had ever had to endure what these two had when they’d gone in behind enemy lines. Marist had escaped. Cash had not.

“Rory told me all about you,” Gareth said, “before I realized who you were. Sit down, sit down! It’s good to see you again. You’re working in law enforcement now, I believe?”

Cash nodded, dropping gracefully into a chair across the desk from the uniformed man, who was about his age, but taller and with a receding hairline. “I’m police chief of a small town in Texas.”

“It’s hard to give up the military life,” Gareth told him. “I couldn’t. So I got this appointment, which was great for me. I love helping mold the soldiers of the future. Young Rory has a lot of potential, by the way,” he added. “He’s very intelligent, and not rattled by boys twice his size. Even the bullies leave him alone,” he chuckled.

Cash grinned. “He’s not afraid to speak his mind, that’s for sure.”

“And his sister,” Gareth said, with a long whistle. “If I weren’t a happily married man with two delightful children, I’d be crawling on my knees after Tippy Moore. She really is beautiful, and she loves that kid,” he volunteered. “When she first brought him here, she was scared to death. There had been some trouble with her mother, but she downplayed it. She showed me papers that gave her full custody of the boy, and she made sure we knew that we were never to let his mother get her hands on him. Or his so-called father.” He studied the other man closely. “I don’t guess you’d know why?”

“I might,” Cash replied, “but I don’t share secrets.”

“I remember,” Gareth replied, and with a grim smile. “You never broke under torture. I only knew one other guy who managed that, and he was SAS—the British Special Air Services.”

“He was in there with me,” Cash told him. “A hell of a guy. He went right back to his unit after we escaped, like nothing had ever happened.”

“So did you.”

Cash didn’t like talking about it. He changed the subject. “How’s Rory doing academically?”

“Very well. Top ten percent of his class,” he said. “He’s an officer, too.” He smiled. “You can always tell the ones who have leadership ability. It shows up early.”

“Indeed it does.” He cocked his head. “No financial problems keeping him here?” he fished.

The commandant sighed. “Not at the moment,” he said. “Although Tippy’s income is sporadic, you understand. There have been times when we’ve stretched due dates…”

“If there are ever other times, could you let me know, without telling Tippy?” He slipped a business card out of his wallet and slid it across the sleek wood of the desk to the commandant. “Think of me as part of Rory’s family.”

Gareth was hesitant. “Grier, this is a hell of an expensive place,” he began. “On a policeman’s salary…”

“Look in the parking lot at what I’m driving.”

“There are lots of cars out there,” the other man began, rising to go to the window.

“You’ll notice it.”

There was a pause and a whistle when he saw the beautiful, red custom-made Jaguar. He turned to Cash. “That’s yours?”

Cash nodded. “I paid cash for it,” he added deliberately.

The other man let out a sigh. “Lucky devil. I drive an SUV.” He turned back to his desk. “I gather that special ops pays well.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Cash disagreed. “But I was heavily into other work before I did special ops,” he added. “And I don’t talk about it. Ever.”

“Sorry.”

“No harm done. It was a long time ago, but I invested wisely, as you see.” He smiled. “Now. How about calling Rory in?”

The commandant knew when an interview was over. He smiled back. “Okay.”

RORY CAME INTO THE commandant’s office breathless, flushed with excitement. Two boys had come down the long hall with him, but they stopped outside the office, and stood watching from across the hall.

“Mr. Grier,” Rory greeted, breaking into a wide smile. “Gosh, it’s nice of you to come pick me up! Sis and I usually take the train!”

“We’re driving,” Cash said, smiling with a little reserve. “I hate trains.”

“Oh, I like them, especially the dining car,” Rory proclaimed. “I’m always hungry.”

“We’ll stop and eat before we start up to New York,” he promised the boy. “Ready to go?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve got my kit right out here in the hall! Sis is beside herself,” he added gleefully. “She’s cleaned the apartment three times and polished all the furniture. She even cleaned out the guest room, so you’d have a place to stay!”

“Thanks, but I like my own space,” Cash said easily. “I’ve booked a hotel room near her apartment.”

The commandant chuckled when he heard that. The Cash he’d known had always been a stickler for protocol. He wouldn’t spend a night in a single woman’s apartment, no matter how many people thought it was acceptable.

“My sister said that you probably wouldn’t stay in the apartment,” Rory said surprisingly. “But she wanted you to think she’s a good housekeeper. She’s practiced cooking beef Stroganoff, too. Judd Dunn told her you like that.”

“It’s my favorite,” Cash confessed, impressed.

Rory grinned. “Mine, too, but I’m glad you like it.”

“Do I have to sign him out?” Cash asked Gareth.

“You do. Come on out and we’ll take care of the formalities. Danbury, have a good holiday,” he told Rory.

Cash was shocked to hear the boy’s last name. He’d assumed the child’s last name was Moore, like Tippy’s.

Rory saw the surprise and laughed. “Tippy’s real last name is Danbury, too. Moore was our grandmother’s last name. Tippy used it when she started modeling.”

That was curious. Cash wondered why, but he wasn’t going to start asking probing questions right now. He signed Rory out, took time to shake hands with Rory’s fascinated friends, and escorted the boy out to his car.

Rory stopped dead when he saw Cash push a button and the trunk of a flashy red Jaguar popped open.

“That’s your car?” Rory exclaimed.

“That’s my car,” Cash told him, smiling. He tossed the boy’s bag into the boot and closed it. “Climb aboard, youngster, and let’s be off.”

“Yes, sir!” Rory replied, waving frantically to the two spellbound boys at the front door of the office. Their noses were actually flattened against the glass when Cash roared out of the parking lot and onto the street.

CHAPTER TWO

CASH STOPPED BY HIS HOTEL to check in before he drove Rory to Tippy’s apartment in Manhattan, in the lower East Village.

Tippy was waiting at her door after she buzzed Cash and Rory up to her flat on the second floor. She looked like a stranger, in jeans and a pullover yellow sweater, with her long red-gold hair flowing down her back. With the casual attire and minus any makeup, she didn’t look like the elegant, beautiful woman Cash remembered from the premiere of her movie, the month before.

She fidgeted nervously as she opened the door, smiling. “Come in,” she said quickly. “I hope you’re both hungry. I made beef Stroganoff.”

Cash’s dark eyebrows rose. “My favorite. How did you know?” he added with wicked dark eyes.

She cleared her throat.

“It’s my favorite, too,” Rory laughed, coming to her rescue. “She always makes it for me on the night I come home.”

Cash chuckled. “That puts me in my place.”

She was looking around behind him. “No suitcase?” she asked. “I cleaned the spare bedroom.”

“Thanks, but I booked a room at the Hilton, down town,” he said with a warm smile. “I like my own space.”

“Oh. Right.” She laughed self-consciously, before she awkwardly turned away and hugged Rory. “It’s great to have you home for the holidays!” she said. “You made good grades, I hear, too.”

“I did,” he assured her.

“And got detention for fighting,” she added deliberately.

He cleared his throat. “An older boy called me a name I didn’t like.”

“Yes?” She folded her arms across her chest and kept staring at him, unblinking.

Rory’s eyes flashed. “He called me a bastard.”

Her own green eyes flashed as well. “I hope you knocked him down.”

He grinned. “I did. He’s my buddy now.” He glanced at Cash, who was watching the byplay with interest. “Nobody else ever stood up to him. He had the makings of a real bully, but I saved him from that awful fate.”

Cash burst out laughing. “Good for you.”

Tippy pushed back her hair. “Let’s eat. I haven’t had lunch,” she added, leading the way into a small but cozy kitchen. The table was set with an embroidered table cloth, on which rested colorful plates, cups, saucers and elegant silverware. She pulled a jug of milk out of the refrigerator and poured two crystal goblets full of it.

“Got another glass?” Cash asked as he paused by a chair. “I like milk.”

She gave him a startled look. “I was going to offer you a whiskey…”

His face tightened. “I don’t drink hard liquor. Ever.”

She was taken aback. “Oh.” She turned away with real embarrassment. She hadn’t said one thing right since he’d walked in the door. She felt like an idiot. She got out another crystal goblet and filled it to the brim with milk. He was such a puzzling man.

He waited until she had the food on the table, and she sat down before he took his own seat. His graciousness made her feel at ease.

“See that?” she told Rory. “There’s nothing wrong with good manners. Your mother must have been a charming woman,” she added to Cash.

Cash took a sip of milk before he answered. “Yes. She was.” He didn’t enlarge on the brief admission.

Tippy swallowed hard. This was going to be an or deal if he was this tight-lipped all night. She recalled what Christabel Gaines had told her once about Cash, that his parents’ marriage was broken up by a model. Apparently the memories were still painful.

“Rory, say grace,” she murmured quickly, adding another shock to Cash’s growing collection of them.

They all bowed their heads. She lifted hers a minute later and gave Cash a mischievous glance. “Tradition is important. We didn’t have any to start with so Rory and I decided on a few of our own. This was one.”

He picked up the serving bowl at her nod and helped himself to Stroganoff. “And the others?”

She smiled at him shyly. It made her look younger. She wasn’t wearing makeup, except for a light lipstick, and her hair looked fresh and clean swinging loose around her shoulders.

“We add a new ornament to the Christmas tree every year and we hang a pickle in the tree.”

His fork poised in midair. “A what?”

“A pickle, Cash,” Rory replied. “It’s a German custom, for good luck. Our grandfather on our mother’s side was German.” He finished a bite of meat and washed it down with milk. “What were your people, Cash?”

“Martians, I believe,” Cash replied seriously.

Tippy’s eyebrows lifted.

“Right.” Rory chuckled.

Cash grinned at him. “My mother’s mother was from Andalusia, in Spain,” he said with a smile. “My father’s people were Cherokee and Swiss.”

“Quite a combination,” Tippy remarked, studying him.

He stared at her curiously. “Your ancestors must have been Irish or Scottish,” he said, noting her hair color.

“That’s what I think,” she agreed, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

“Our mother’s a redhead,” Rory interjected. “Tippy’s is natural, too, but lots of people think she dyes it.”

Tippy took a long sip of milk and said nothing.

“I thought about dyeing mine purple, but my cousin, who was our former chief, said it might offend people.” Cash sighed. “That was about the same time he made me take off my earring,” he added disgustedly.

Tippy almost choked on her milk.

“You wore an earring?” Rory exclaimed, delighted.

“Just a simple gold one,” Cash admitted. “I was working for the government at the time and my boss was so politically correct that he wore a sign apologizing for stepping on bacteria and killing it.” He nodded emphatically. “That’s a true story.”

Tippy was wiping her eyes. She laughed so hard that she was almost crying. It had been years since she’d felt so lighthearted with anyone. From their rocky beginning to laughter was a big step.

“She never laughs,” Rory commented with a grin. “Especially on location shoots. She hates photographers on account of one made her sit on a rock in a bikini and she got bitten by a tern.”

“The stupid bird dive-bombed me five times,” Tippy had to admit. “On its final assault, it took part of my scalp away!”

“You should tell him about what the pigeons did to you on that shoot in Italy,” Rory prompted.

She shivered delicately. “I’m still trying to forget it. I used to like pigeons.”

“I love pigeons,” Cash said, grinning. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had them delicately wrapped in puff pastry and fried in olive oil…”

“You barbarian!” Tippy exclaimed.

“It’s okay, I eat snakes and lizards, too, I’m not strictly a pigeon man.”

Rory was all but rolling on the floor. “Gosh, Cash, this is going to be the best Christmas we’ve ever had!”

Tippy was inclined to agree. The man across from her bore very little resemblance to the antagonistic, hostile law enforcement officer she’d met while filming in Jacobsville, Texas. Everybody said Cash Grier was mysterious and dangerous. Nobody said he had a howling sense of humor.

Seeing her confusion, Cash leaned toward Rory and spoke in a loud whisper. “She’s confused. Back in Texas, they told her I kept military secrets about flying saucers in a locked file.”

“I heard it was aliens,” Tippy murmured without cracking a smile.

“I do not keep aliens in my filing cabinet,” he said indignantly. A minute later, his dark eyes started to twinkle. “I keep those in a closet in my house.”

Rory chuckled. Tippy was laughing, too.

“And I thought actors were nuts,” Tippy remarked on a sigh.

AFTER LUNCH, CASH announced that he was taking them to the park. Tippy changed into an emerald-green pant suit and put her hair in a braid, adding just a touch of makeup to her oval face.

Her apartment was on a quiet, tree-lined street. It was a transitional neighborhood that had gone from fairly dangerous to middle class. The renovations were notice able, especially in Tippy’s apartment, which had black wrought-iron banisters that led up the stone steps to her two-story apartment.

In her heyday as a model, she’d had money to burn, and briefly she’d lived off Park Avenue. But after her year’s absence from the profession, when modeling jobs became thin on the ground, she had to budget. That was when she’d moved here, just before she started shooting the movie in Jacobsville that had unexpectedly restarted her career. She could probably have afforded something better now, but she’d become attached to her neighbors and the peaceful street where she lived. There was a bookstore just down at the corner and a food market past it. There was also a small mom-and-pop café which served the best coffee around. It was lovely in the spring. Now, with winter here, the trees were bare and the city looked cold and gray.

Cash’s red Jaguar was parked just outside the steps that led into her apartment building. She did a double take when she saw it, but she didn’t comment. Rory climbed into the back seat, leaving Tippy to sit up front with Cash.

“I thought Central Park was dangerous,” Rory remarked as they strolled along the sidewalk after the short drive, glancing at the pretty carriages hitched to horses that were waiting for customers. “And should you leave your car parked there?” he added, looking over his shoulder at the beautiful car.

Cash shrugged. “Central Park is much safer now. And anybody who can get past my pet rattlesnake is welcome to drive my car.”

“Your what…?” Tippy burst out, looking around at her ankles.

He grinned. “My alarm system. That’s what I call it. I’ve got an electronic monitoring system installed some where in the engine—if anybody tries to hot-wire the car, or steals it, it will take about ten minutes for the police to find it. Even in New York City,” he added smugly.

“No wonder you look so confident,” Rory said. “It sure is a beaut of a car, Cash,” he added wistfully.

“It is that,” Tippy remarked. “I can drive, but it’s impractical to have a car in this city,” she said, indicating the abundance of taxis buzzing up and down the streets. “Usually, when I went on modeling jobs, I didn’t have time to waste looking for parking spots. There are never enough. Cabs and subways are quicker when you’re in a rush.”

“They are,” he agreed. He glanced down at her, fascinated by her fresh beauty that was only accentuated by the lack of makeup.

“Where are you shooting the movie?” he asked.

“Here in the city, mostly,” she said. “It’s a comedy with touches of a spy drama mixed in. I have to wrestle with a foreign agent in one scene, and outrun a gunman in another.” She grimaced. “We only just started filming before we broke for the holidays, and I’ve got bruises everywhere already from the fight coordinator’s choreography. I actually have to learn aikido for the film.”

“A useful martial art,” Cash remarked. “It was one of the first forms I learned.”

“How many do you know?” Rory asked at once. Cash shrugged. “Karate, tae kwon do, hapkido, kung fu, and a few disciplines that aren’t in the book. You never know when you’ll need to fall back on that training. It comes in handy in police work, now that I’m not stuck behind a desk all the time.”

“Judd said you worked in Houston with the D.A.’s office,” Tippy said.

He nodded. “I was a cybercrime expert. It wasn’t challenging enough to suit me. I like something a little less routine and structured.”

“What do you do in Jacobsville?” Rory wanted to know. Cash chuckled. “I run from my secretaries,” he said sheepishly. “Just before I phoned your sister about coming up for the holidays, the new one quit and dumped a trash can over my head.” He made a face and touched his dark hair. “I’m still picking coffee grounds out of my hair.”

Tippy’s green eyes widened. She stopped and looked up at Cash. She couldn’t believe he was telling the truth. She remembered how efficiently he’d stopped the assistant director on her first film from touching her when she’d objected to his familiarity.

Rory was laughing. “Really?”

“She wasn’t really cut out for police work,” he said. “She couldn’t talk on the phone and type at the same time, so she didn’t do much typing.”

“Why…?” Tippy fished.

“…did she empty a trash can on me?” he finished for her.

“Damned if I know! I told her not to force the lock on my filing cabinet, but she wouldn’t listen. Is it my fault my baby python, Mikey, jumped out of the drawer at her? She scared him. He has a nervous condition.”

They’d both stopped now and were staring at him.

He sighed. “Isn’t it strange how snakes make some people nervous?” he asked philosophically.

“You have a snake named Mikey?” Tippy exclaimed.

“Cag Hart had an albino python that he gave to a breeder after he got married. The python’s mate had a litter of the cute little things, and I asked for one. The day he gave me Mikey, I didn’t have time to take him home so I put him in the filing cabinet, temporarily, in a little plastic aquarium with water and a limb to climb. It was working very nicely until my secretary jimmied the lock. Sadly, Mikey had escaped and was sitting on top of the files in the filing cabinet drawer.”

“What did she do?” Rory asked.

He scowled. “She scared the poor little thing half to death,” he muttered. “I’m sure he’s going to have psychological problems for the rest of his…”

“Afterward!” Rory interrupted.

His dark eyebrows rose. “After she screamed bloody murder and threw my spare handcuffs at me, you mean?”

Tippy just stared at him, her green eyes twinkling.

“That was when she dumped my trash can over my head. It was almost worth it. She had a spike haircut and black lipstick and nail polish, and body piercings with little silver rings all over visible space. Mikey’s slowly getting over the trauma. He’s living in my house now.”

Tippy was laughing too hard to talk at all.

Rory shook his head. “I almost had a snake once.”

“What happened to it?” Cash asked.

“She wouldn’t let me out of the pet shop with it,” Rory sighed, pointing at his sister.

“Doesn’t like snakes, hmm?” he drawled with a wicked glance at Tippy.

“It wasn’t because I was afraid of it, it was because he couldn’t take it to school with him and I’m not home long enough to take care of a pet. But if you really need a secretary, as soon as I finish this movie, I’ll have my nose pierced and my hair spiked, first thing,” she said, tongue in cheek.

Cash’s perfect white teeth flashed at her. “I don’t know. Can you type and chew gum at the same time?”

“She can’t type a word. And she is scared of snakes…” Rory began enthusiastically.

“Stop right there,” Tippy murmured with a quick look at her brother. “And don’t you let him corrupt you,” she cautioned. “Unless you want me to tell him your fatal weakness!”

Rory held up both hands. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Honest.”

She pursed her full lips. “Okay.”

“Look! There’s the guy with the bagpipes! Give me a twenty, sis, would you?” Rory exclaimed, nodding to ward a man in a kilt standing just outside a hotel near the park with a set of bagpipes. He was playing “Amazing Grace.”

Tippy pulled a large bill from her fanny pack and handed it to Rory. “Here you go. We’ll wait here for you,” she said with an indulgent smile.

Cash watched him go, his eyes sliding to the bag piper. “He plays well,” Cash said.

“Rory wants a set of bagpipes, but I doubt the commandant would be inclined to let him practice in his dorm.”

“I agree.” Cash smiled wistfully as he listened to the haunting melody. “Is he here often?” he asked her.

“We see him all around the neighborhood,” Tippy replied lazily. “He’s one of the nicer street people. Homeless, of course. I slip him some money whenever I have a little extra, so he’ll be able to buy a blanket or a hot cup of coffee. A lot of us around here indulge him. He has a gift, don’t you think?”

“He does. Know anything about him?” he added, impressed by her concern for a stranger.

“Not much. They say his whole family died, but not how or when…or even why. He doesn’t talk to people much,” she murmured, watching Rory hand him the bill and receive a faint smile for it as the piper halted for a moment. “New York is full of street people. Most of them have some talent or other, some way to make a little cash. You can see them sleeping in cardboard boxes, going through Dumpsters for odds and ends.” She shook her head. “And we’re supposed to be the richest country on earth.”

“You’d be amazed at how people live in third world countries,” he remarked.

She looked up at him. “I had a photo shoot in Jamaica, near Montego Bay,” she recalled. “There was a five-star hotel on a hill, with parrots in cages and a huge swimming pool and every convenience known to man. Just down the hill, a few hundred feet away, was a small village of corrugated tin houses sitting in mud, where people actually lived.”

His dark eyes narrowed. He nodded slowly. “I’ve been to the Middle East. Many people there live in adobe houses with no electricity, no running water, no indoor facilities. They make their own clothing, and they travel in pony carts pulled by donkeys. Our standard of living would shock them speechless.”

Her breath drew in sharply. “I had no idea.”

He looked around the city. “Everywhere I went, I was made welcome. The poorest families were eager to share the little they had with me. They’re mostly good people. Kind people.” He glanced at her. “But they make bad enemies.”

Tippy was looking at the scars on his lean, strong face. “Rory’s commandant said that they tortured you,” she recalled softly.

He nodded and his dark eyes searched her light ones. “I don’t talk about it. I still have nightmares, after all these years.”

She studied him curiously. “I have nightmares, too,” she said absently.

His eyes probed hers, seeking answers to the puzzle she represented. “You lived for a long time with an older actor who was known publicly as the most licentious man in Hollywood,” he said bluntly.

She glanced toward Rory, who was sitting on a bench, listening as the bagpiper started playing again. She wrapped her arms close around her chest and wouldn’t look up.

Cash moved in front of her, very close. Strangely, it didn’t frighten her. She met his searching gaze. It almost winded her with its intensity.

“Tell me,” he said softly.

That softness was irresistible. She took a deep breath and plowed ahead. “I ran away from home when I was twelve. They were going to put me in foster care, and I was terrified that my mother might be able to get me out again—for revenge because I called the police on her and her boyfriend after he…” She hesitated.

“Come on,” he prompted.

“After he raped me repeatedly,” she bit off, and couldn’t look at him then. “I wouldn’t have gone back to her, not if it meant starving. So I went on the streets in Atlanta, because I had no way to earn money for food.” Her face clenched as she remembered it. Cash’s expression was like stone. He’d suspected something like that, from the bits and pieces of her life that he’d ferreted out.

She continued quietly, “The first man who came up to me was handsome and dashing. He wanted to take me home.” Her eyes closed. “I was hungry and cold and scared to death. I didn’t want to go with him. But he had the kindest eyes…” She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“He took me to his hotel. He had an enormous suite, luxury fit for a king. When we got inside, he laughed because I was nervous and promised he wouldn’t hurt me, that he just wanted to help me. I was so scared, I spilled a glass of water down the front of my shirt.” She smiled. “I’ll never forget the shock on his face as long as I live. I had short hair and I was never voluptuous, even back then, but the wet shirt…” She looked up at Cash, who was listening intently. “But of course, he wasn’t interested in me in that way…”

Cash’s lips parted on a soft explosion of breath. “Cullen Cannon, the great international lover, was gay?” he asked, astonished.

She nodded. “He was. But he hid it with the help of women friends. He was a sweet and gentle man,” she recalled wistfully. “I offered to leave, and he wouldn’t hear of it. He said that he was lonely. His family had disowned him. He had nobody. So I stayed. He bought me clothes, put me back in school, shielded me from my own past so that my mother wouldn’t be able to find me.”

Her eyes misted as she continued her story. “I loved him,” she whispered. “I would have given him anything. But all he wanted was to take care of me.” She laughed. “Perhaps later, when he’d put me in modeling classes in New York, he liked the image it gave him to have a pretty young woman living with him. I don’t know. But I stayed there until he died.”

“The media said it was a heart attack.”

She shook her head. “He died of AIDS. At the last, his biological children came to see him, and they buried the past. They resented me at first, suspected me of trying to play up to him for money. But I guess they finally realized that I was crazy about him.” She smiled. “They tried to make me take his apartment over, when he died, tried to give me a trust account out of their in heritance. I refused it. You see, I nursed him the last year he lived.”

“That’s why you didn’t model for a year, just before you were offered your first film contract. They said you were in an accident and had to heal,” Cash recalled.

She was flattered that he remembered that much when he’d literally hated her in Jacobsville. “That’s right,” she said. “He didn’t want anybody to know about him. Not even then.”

“Poor guy.”

“He was the best man I ever knew,” she said sadly. “I still put flowers on his grave. He saved me.”

“What about the man who raped you?” he asked bluntly.

She looked at Rory, who was talking to the bagpiper. Her expression was tormented. “My mother said he was Rory’s father,” she managed.

Now his intake of breath was really audible. “And you love Rory.”

She turned to him. “With all my heart,” she agreed. “My mother’s still with Rory’s father, Sam Stanton, on and off. They are both drug addicts. Sam and my mother have fights and he beats her up and she calls the police. He always comes back.”

“How did you end up with Rory?” he asked.

“The police officer who saved me the last night I was at home—when Sam raped me—called me when Rory was just four years old. I was still living with Cullen and he was powerful and rich. Cullen went with me to see Rory in the hospital after he was severely beaten by his father. My mother was quite taken with Cullen,” she recalled coldly. “So after Rory was released she brought him to the hotel where we were staying. Fishing, for money. Cullen offered to buy the child. And she sold him to us,” she added icily. “For fifty thousand dollars.”

“My God,” he bit off. “And I thought I’d seen it all.”

“Rory’s been with me ever since,” she told him. “He’s like my own child.”

“You never got pregnant…?”

She shook her head. “I was a late bloomer. I didn’t even have my first period until I was fifteen. Pretty lucky, huh?” She pushed back wisps of red hair. “Real lucky.”

“But your mother wants Rory back now.”

“The money ran out years ago. She’s having to get her drug money by working in a convenience store, and she doesn’t like it. Sam works when he feels like it, and I don’t think he does anything legal, either. My attorney paid my mother off last year when she threatened to go to the tabloids about the brutal way I was treating her,” she scoffed. “Rich movie star allows poor mother to live in poverty while she rides in stretch limousines.” She smiled cynically. “Get the picture?”

“In Technicolor,” he agreed coldly.

“So now she’s decided she wants Rory back. She sent Rory’s father up to the military school and he tried to get him out. Rory told the commandant what his father had done to him—and to me—and the commandant called the police. The rat ran for his life before they got there.”

“Good for the commandant.”

“But that doesn’t rule out kidnapping. I’d pay any thing to get Rory back, and they know it. I don’t sleep very well these days,” she added. “Rory’s father has a cousin who lives near here, in a really bad part of town. They’re close, and the cousin has his dirty fingers in a lot of illegal pies.”

Cash was doing mental gymnastics. “Does Rory care for his father or his mother?”

“He hates our mother,” she replied. “And he doesn’t know that Sam Stanton is his real father.”

“You haven’t told him?” he probed.

“I haven’t had the heart to,” she explained. “He took a real beating from Sam. The psychologist says he’ll have mental scars for the rest of his life from that or deal.”

“How about you?”

“I’ve lived through enough to make me strong, with occasional lapses. But mostly, I’m tough,” she murmured.

“Not tough enough, just yet,” he commented. “But you will be, if you hang around with me long enough.”

She glanced at him with a teasing smile. “Am I going to?”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you. I have a few quirks.”

“So do I. And a few hang-ups,” she added.

He put his hands in his pockets while he stared down at her, to the music of New York traffic. “I don’t like ties very much. I’m making no promises. I want to see you while I’m here. Period.”

“You don’t pull any punches.”

He nodded.

She searched his dark eyes. “I don’t find you repulsive,” she said bluntly. “That’s new. But I’ve got some terrible scars of my own. I can put on a good act as a vamp when I’m around men. But it’s all a ruse. I haven’t ever had consensual sex.”

He whistled. “That’s a heavy load to put on a man.”

She nodded.

He smiled slowly. “So, it’s back to Dating 101.”

She laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“We’ll go slow,” he said, noting Rory’s sudden reappearance. “That took a while,” he commented when the boy came back laughing.

“He wanted to know about military school. Guess what? He was a soldier in Vietnam.” Rory grimaced. “Sad, huh, that he’d end up like that.”

Cash’s eyes were haunted as he studied the man, who lifted a hand and waved before he went back to his bagpiping. Cash waved back. “Too many veterans wind up like that,” he commented quietly.

“Not you,” Rory said proudly.

Cash smiled at him and ruffled his hair. “No. Not me. How about going to the Statue of Liberty? It’s closed, so we can’t go up in it, but we can see it. Are you game?”

“Lead me to it!” Rory laughed.

Cash took Tippy’s slender hand and locked her fingers into his, noting their coldness and faint trembling. It was like electricity sparking between them. Tippy caught her breath audibly. She looked up with wide, fascinated eyes, feeling as if the ground had rocked under her feet. It was magic!

He searched her eyes. “Lesson One, Page One, Hand-holding,” he whispered as Rory paused to look in a store window.

She laughed breathlessly. It sounded like silver bells.

CHAPTER THREE

THE DAY SPENT SIGHTSEEING with Cash was, Tippy thought later, one of the best days of her entire life. He seemed to know New York like the back of his hand, and he enjoyed sharing little-known bits of history with Tippy and Rory.

“How do you know so much about this place?” Rory wanted to know when they were back in Tippy’s apartment that evening.

“My best friend in basic training was from New York City,” he confided. “He was a gold mine of information!”

Tippy laughed. “I have a friend who’s like that about Nassau,” she said. “She’s on a modeling trip now, to Russia, of all places.”

“What is she modeling?”

Tippy gave him a mischievous look. “Swimsuits.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not! The powers that be thought it would be sexy to have her pose with the Kremlin in the back ground, wearing fur boots and a fur coat.”

“She’ll be pickled if she does that here, won’t she?” he asked.

“It’s fake fur,” she pointed out, laughing. “But it’s very expensive fake fur, and it looks real.”

“How about a sandwich, Cash?” Rory called from the kitchen.

“Not for me, thanks, Rory. I’m going back to my hotel to unwind,” he added with a smile. “I had a great time today.”

“So did I, Cash,” Rory said sincerely. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“Are you?” Tippy echoed.

He glanced from Rory’s curious expression to Tippy’s radiant one. “Why not?” he mused, smiling. “I can stand a tour of the museums if you can.”

“I love museums!” Rory enthused.

“As long as I don’t have to pose in one.” Tippy sighed. “I have terrible emotional scars from posing with one leg up, leaning back, in front of a Rodin sculpture for four hours.”

“I wonder if it’s the one I’m thinking of?” Cash drawled, chuckling when her cheeks went pink.

“I’m sure it was one that contained totally clothed people,” she lied.

He shook his head. “You wish,” he said. “What time do you people get up on a holiday week?”

“Eight,” Rory said.

Tippy nodded. “We’re not big on late nights around here. One of us is used to military routine, which be gins at daylight, and the other one has to get up before daylight to work on films,” she said, tongue in cheek.

“Eight it is, then. I know where there’s a bakery,” he told them. “They have homemade cinnamon buns, bear claws, filled doughnuts…”

“I can’t have sweets,” Rory replied sadly. He pointed at Tippy. “She has no willpower. If something sweet comes in the door, it will never leave.”

Tippy laughed delightedly. “He’s right. I’ve spent most of my life fighting excess pounds. We have bacon and eggs for breakfast. Pure protein. No bread.”

“Shades of basic training.” He sighed. “Okay. Can we have breakfast here? But you’d better make coffee,” he added sternly. “I am not having breakfast without coffee, even if that means bringing it in a sippy cup.”

“A sippy cup?” Tippy teased.

“I look sexy holding a sippy cup,” he replied, and the smile on his lips was a genuine one. It had been a long time since he’d smiled at a woman and meant it. Well, except for Christabel Gaines. But she was married to his best friend now.

“Well, I’m having a sandwich before I go to bed,” Rory called. “Good night, Cash! See you tomorrow!”

“That’s a deal,” Cash called back.

He caught Tippy’s soft hand in his and tugged her to the door with him. “I’ll check and see if there’s anything good at the opera or the ballet, if you’d like…”

“I love either one,” she exclaimed.

“Symphony orchestras?” he asked, testing.

She nodded enthusiastically.

“I guess it won’t kill me to wear a suit,” he sighed.

“You took Christabel Gaines to a ballet in Houston, I recall,” she said, with just a hint of jealousy that she couldn’t disguise.

It surprised him. His dark eyes probed her light ones until she moved restlessly under the intensity of the gaze. “Christabel Dunn, these days. And, yes, I did. She’d never been to one in her life.”

“I thought she was a spoiled little princess,” Tippy commented. “I was wrong all the way down the line. She’s a very special woman. Judd’s lucky.”

“Yes, he is,” he had to agree. Christabel was still a sore spot with him. “They dote on the twins.”

“Babies are nice,” she said. “Rory was precious even at the age of four.” She smiled wistfully. “Every day’s an adventure with a child.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

She looked up, surprised by the expression on his lean, hard face.

He averted his eyes. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He let go of her hand and left her standing. She divined that something in his past had wounded him deeply, something to do with children. Judd had told her that he thought Cash had been married once, but no more than that. He was a puzzle. But he appealed to her in ways no other man ever had.

CASH ARRIVED AT EIGHT SHARP the next morning, carrying a silvertone coffee holder in one hand and a paper sack in the other.

“I made coffee,” she said quickly.

He lifted the holder. “Vanilla cappuccino,” he said, waving it under her nose. “My only real weakness. Well, except for these,” he waved the sack.

“What’s in there?” Tippy asked, following him to the breakfast table she’d already set, where Rory was waiting to start eating.

“Cheese Danishes,” he said. “Sorry. I can’t give up sugar. I think it’s one of the four major food groups, along with chocolate and ice cream and pizza.”

Rory burst out laughing. So did Tippy.

“Amazing,” she said, giving his powerful body a lingering scrutiny. “You don’t look as if you’ve ever tasted fat or sugar in your life.”

“I work out every day,” he confided. “I have to. Those uniforms are sewn on us, you know,” he added deadpan, “to emphasize what nice muscles we have.”

Her eyes glanced off his biceps, very noticeable in the knit shirt he was wearing with dark slacks, as he swung his black leather jacket onto an easy chair on his way to the kitchen.

“No comment?” he taunted.

She sighed. “I was just noticing the muscles,” she murmured dryly.

Rory had excused himself to go to the bathroom. Cash caught Tippy’s long skirt and pulled her close to his chair. “If you play your cards right, I just might take my shirt off for you one day,” he purred.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or protest. He was so unpredictable.

“Not right away, of course,” he added. “I’m not that kind of man!”

Now she did laugh. Her eyes lit up, sparkling like emeralds. He grinned, too. “Here. Have a cheese Danish. I brought enough for all of us.”

She reached down into the bag, very aware of his dark eyes on her face.

“Your skin is beautiful, even without makeup,” he noted deeply. “It looks like silk.”

Her head turned. She met his eyes evenly and her heart jumped. He was very sexy.

“What are you thinking?” he murmured.

“I’ll bet you know everything there is to know about women,” she confessed huskily.

His eyes narrowed. “And you know next to nothing about men.”

Her eyes misted. “I haven’t wanted to,” she said softly. Her gaze fell to his wide, chiseled mouth.

“Careful,” he said quietly. “I’ve kept to myself for a long time.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered daringly, meeting his searching gaze. “I wish…oh, I wish!”

“You wish…what?” he prompted, his jaw clutching as the fragrance of her body drifted down into his nostrils. She was so close that he could see her heart beating at the neck of her blouse. He wanted to jerk her down into his arms and kiss her until her beautiful mouth began to swell.

She was feeling the same hunger. She looked at his mouth and wondered how it would feel to kiss it in tensely, the way she’d stage-kissed her fellow actor in the movie they’d made at the Dunn ranch. She could al most taste Cash’s hard mouth. Her body felt swollen, achy. It was like a thirst that no water would ever be able to quench.

Her breath caught noisily in her throat as her full lips parted. “I wish…”

The sound of the toilet flushing broke them apart. She stood up, forgetting the Danish, and went to the sink to wash her hands because she needed something to still them.

Rory came back, totally oblivious to what he’d interrupted, and helped himself to a Danish. After a minute, Tippy poured coffee for herself and orange juice for Rory, and sat down at the table as if nothing at all had happened.

THEY WENT TO THE AMERICAN Museum of Natural History first, to see the renovated dinosaur exhibit on the fourth floor. There was a long line because of the special exhibits, one that included a film and a shop concerned only with Albert Einstein. They stood in line for over an hour before they were able to get their tickets.

Rory went from one of the fossils to another, eagerly climbing a flight of stairs above the tallest skeleton so that he could look down on the massive shoulder blades and hip joints.

“He loves dinosaurs,” Tippy remarked, sauntering along beside Cash in her long green velvet skirt with boots and a white silk blouse under her black leather coat. Her hair was around her shoulders, and she was drawing attention from men as well as women, despite the very light touch of cosmetics she’d used.

Beside her Cash felt a surge of pride in her company. She really was beautiful, he thought, and it had so little to do with surface appearance. She was pure gold inside, where it counted.

“I like dinosaurs myself,” he commented. “I was here several years ago, but I missed the dinosaurs because this exhibit was being reworked. They’re impressive.”

She leaned closer to a sign to read it.

“You aren’t wearing your glasses,” he remarked.

She laughed self-consciously. “I’m a walking disaster when I have them on,” she said dryly. “I clean them with whatever’s handy. The lenses stay scratched, and I’ve already had them replaced twice.”

“They have new lenses that don’t scratch easily,” he pointed out.

“Yes, that’s the kind I got. Sadly, they aren’t fool proof.” She lifted a beautiful shoulder. “I wish I could wear contacts, but my eyes don’t like them. I get infections.”

He reached out a big, lean hand and caught a strand of her hair in it, testing its softness and bringing her close up against him in the process. “Your hair is alive,” he said quietly. “I’ve never seen this color look so natural.”

“It is natural,” she replied, feeling her knees go shaky at the unexpected proximity. He smelled of cologne and soap—clean, attractive smells. Her hands rested on his shirt, feeling the warm muscle and the faint cushiony sensation of hair under her hands. She wanted to pull the shirt up and touch him there with a fervor that made her breath catch. She’d never felt desire so torrid in her life.

“And nothing about you is artificial?” he probed.

“Nothing physical,” she agreed.

His dark eyes searched her green ones for longer than he meant to. His face seemed to clench. She knew he could probably feel her heart racing. She couldn’t help it. He was a particularly masculine man. Every thing feminine inside her reacted to his touch. “I don’t trust women.”

“You were married,” she recalled.

He nodded. His fingers curled around the strand of hair he was holding. His eyes were haunted. “I loved her. I thought she loved me.” He laughed coldly. “She certainly loved what I could buy her.”

She felt cold chills run down her spine. “There’s so much in your past that you don’t talk about,” she said softly. “You’re very mysterious, in your way.”

“Trust comes hard to me,” he told her. “If people can get close to you, they can wound you.”

“And the answer is to keep everyone at arm’s length?” she replied.

“Don’t you?” he shot back. “Except for Rory, and briefly Judd Dunn, I don’t recall ever seeing you keeping company with anyone. Especially a man.”

She swallowed hard. “I have horrible memories of men. Except for Cullen, and there was no physical contact there. He liked women as friends, but found them physically repulsive.”

“Did you love him?”

“In my way, I did,” she said, surprising him. “He was one of two people in my entire life who were good to me without expecting anything in return.” Her smile was cynical. “You can’t imagine how many times you get propositioned in my line of work. It took years to perfect a line that worked.”

“You can’t blame men for trying, Tippy,” he said curtly. “You look like every man’s dream of perfection.”

Her heart jumped. “Even yours?” she asked in a teasing tone. Except she wasn’t teasing. She wanted him to want her. She’d never wanted anything so much.

He let go of her hair. “I gave up women years ago.”

“Aren’t you lonely?” she wanted to know.

“Are you?” he retorted.

She sighed, studying his strong features with a vague hunger. “I’ve got cold feet,” she said huskily. “Once or twice over the years I took a chance on someone who seemed nice. But nobody wanted to talk to me, to get to know me. They only wanted me in bed.”

His eyes narrowed. “Can you…?”

Her gaze fell to his chest, where the muscles were outlined by the close fit of his knit shirt. “I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I haven’t…tried.”

“Do you want to?”

She bit her lower lip and frowned, staring at the dinosaur without really seeing it. “I’m twenty-six years old. I don’t risk my heart, and I’m happy enough. I have Rory and a career. I suppose I’ve got all I need.”

“It’s a half life.”

“So is yours,” she accused, looking up at him.

“I have an even better reason than yours,” he said coldly.

“But you won’t share it,” she guessed. “You don’t trust me enough.”

He rammed his hands into his slacks pockets and glared down at her. “I was married once, years ago. I was in love for the first time in my life and crazy to share everything with my wife. She’d just told me she was pregnant. I was over the moon. I wanted to tell her all about my life before I married her.” His eyes grew cold. “So I did. She sat and listened. She was very calm. She didn’t say a word. She just listened, as if she understood. She was a little pale, but that wasn’t surprising. I did horrible things in my line of work. Really terrible.” He turned away from her. “I had to go out of town on business for a few days. She saw me off very naturally, no fuss. I came back with little presents for her and some thing for the baby, even though she was only a few weeks along. She met me at the door with her suit cases.”

He leaned forward against the banister. He didn’t look at her while he spoke. “She told me that she’d gone to a clinic while I was away. She’d seen a lawyer, too. Just before she walked out the door, she told me that she wasn’t bringing the child of a cold-blooded killer into the world.”

Tippy had thought there was something traumatic in his past, besides his work. Now she understood what it was. The hunger he displayed for Judd and Christabel’s twins made sense now. She could almost feel his pain, as if it were her own. She was deeply flattered that he trusted her with something so intimate.

“No comment?” he drawled poisonously, without looking down at her.

“Was she very young?” she asked softly.

“She was my age.”

She lowered her eyes to his hands on the steel rail. He wasn’t showing any emotion at all, but his knuckles were white from the pressure he was exerting on the bar.

“I won’t step on an insect if I can avoid it,” she said quietly. “I would never be able to sleep with a man without using protection unless I loved him. I think a child is part of that.”

His head turned slowly and he looked down at her curiously. “She was right. I was a cold-blooded killer,” he said flatly.

She searched his hard face and her eyes were soft and tender. “I don’t believe that.”

He scowled. “I beg your pardon?”

“Rory’s commandant told him that you were part of a crack military unit in special ops,” she said. “You were sent in when negotiations failed, when lives were at stake. So don’t try to convince me that you were a hit man for the mob, or that you killed for money. You aren’t that sort of person.”

He didn’t seem to be breathing. “You know nothing about me,” he said abruptly.

“My grandmother was Irish. She had the second sight. It’s a gift. All the women in my family have it, except for my mother,” she added. Her eyes softened on his face. “I know things that I shouldn’t know. I feel things before they happen. I’ve been very worried about Rory lately, because I sense something dangerous connected to him.”

“I don’t believe in clairvoyance,” he said stiffly. “It’s a myth.”

“Maybe it is to you. It isn’t to me.” She glanced around the room, looking for her little brother and picking him out of a crowd looking up at a stuffed coelacanth suspended from the high ceiling of the room.

Cash felt violated. He felt as if he’d become trans parent with this woman, and he didn’t like it. He kept to himself, he kept secrets. He didn’t want Tippy walking around inside his brain.

“Now I’ve made you angry. I’m sorry,” she said gently, without looking at him. “I’m going to the Einstein shop. Rory wants a T-shirt. I’ll meet you both in the lobby in an hour or so.”

He caught her hand and tugged her back to him. “No, you won’t. We’ll go together.” He tipped her chin up so that he could see her eyes. “I told Rory once that I value honesty.”

“No, you don’t, not if it concerns having anyone else guess about your private life.”

“I told you about my private life,” he replied. He took a slow breath. “I’ve never told anyone else about my child.”

“I have that kind of face,” she said with a tender smile.

“Yes, you do.” He touched her cheek lightly. “I’ve got more emotional scars than you have, and that’s saying something. We’re both damaged people. That being the case, it would be insane of us to get involved with one another. So that’s not going to happen.”

Her eyes became shy, curious. “You would… You’ve thought about…getting involved with me?” She asked the question as if she didn’t believe what she’d heard.

That it flattered her was obvious. He was surprised. He hadn’t thought she felt attracted to him. It would be difficult for her, with her past.

“With your past…” he murmured aloud.

She moved a step closer to him. It made her breathless. “You’re forgetting something. You’re a cop.”

“And that’s why you’re not afraid of me?” he murmured. He was feeling a little breathless himself at her proximity. She smelled like flowers.

One perfect shoulder lifted nervously. “Judd Dunn was a Texas Ranger. I felt safe with him.”

“Are you making a point?”

She nibbled her lower lip and her high cheekbones flushed a little. “I don’t feel…safe…with you, exactly. You stir me up inside. I feel…shaky. I feel swollen all over. I think about touching you, all the time. I keep wondering,” she whispered while they were briefly isolated from the other visitors, “how it would feel if you kissed me.”

He couldn’t believe she’d said that. But her eyes were saying it, too. She seemed almost dazed.

His lean hands contracted a little roughly, pulling her up closer to the long, heated, muscular length of his fit body. He felt her breath catch. His dark eyes dropped to her full lips. “I think about touching you, too, Tippy,” he said deep in his throat. His thumbs edged out under her arms, tracing just at the curve of her full breasts. His mouth hovered inches from hers. His breath was warm, minty. “I think about the silky feel of your skin against my chest. I think about breaking your mouth open under mine and tasting you, inside, with my tongue.”

Tippy gasped. Her body trembling. She leaned her forehead against his chest while she tried to breathe normally. Her nails bit into his chest. “Cash,” she groaned.

His thumbs became insistent. Desire coursed through him like a great flood. He felt himself going rigid, losing control. He thought about stepping back, but her hips moved just faintly and he shuddered at the lash of pleasure he felt.

She looked up, surprised by the immediate response of his body. She knew why men’s bodies grew hard like that, but it had always been repugnant to her before. Now, it was fascinating, glorious. Her lips parted as she searched his stormy eyes. He wanted her!

She started to move again, desperate to please him, but his hands suddenly dropped to her slender hips and grasped them roughly.

“If you do that again,” he said through his teeth, “there’s going to be a whole new definition of public exhibition, and we’re both going to figure in it prominently.”

“Oh. Oh!” She swallowed hard, looking around with embarrassing color. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be watching.

He put her completely away and straightened, reciting multiplication tables in his head to divert his thoughts. It had been a long dry spell, but even so, his reaction to Tippy was unsettling.

She was feeling something similar. She’d gone from frigid apprehension to passionate anticipation in the space of seconds. Suddenly, all she could think about was a bed, with Cash in the middle of it. She could al most picture that powerful body without clothes…

She made a faint sound and couldn’t have looked at Cash to save her life.

He couldn’t help the soft chuckle that escaped his tight throat. She was an open book. It was flattering to know that he could arouse her with such innocent love play. She stirred him up, too, but he didn’t trust her. Or did he? He’d never told another living soul about his wife.

As if seeking comfort, her beautifully manicured hands went to his shirt and pressed there, unsteadily. She kept a discreet distance between her body and his. She didn’t dare look up at him. She’d never felt so insecure, so shy. She’d never felt so happy or so…stimulated.

His big hands caught her tiny waist and pressed there. Around them, people were moving, talking, laughing. But they were alone in the world. It was a sensation Cash could never remember feeling in his life.

“I could hurt you,” he bit off. “And I don’t mean physically. I’m a bad risk. I’m too used to my own space. I don’t share. I don’t…feel much emotion any more.”

He sounded vulnerable. She was fascinated. Her soft green eyes looked up into his turbulent dark ones and it was like lightning striking. She actually caught her breath, and it was audible. “I’m feeling things I never dreamed I could.”

His hands jerked on her waist. His teeth clenched. “It would be suicide!” he said roughly.

She remembered a line from a book, and her eyes were brilliant as she whispered, with faint amusement, “Well, do you want to live forever?”

It broke the tension. He laughed.

Her face was radiant. “I didn’t know if I could be with a man, even a few days ago,” she confessed huskily. “But I’m almost sure I could be with you. I know I could!”

Now he looked fascinated, too. He studied her in a rapt silence. “To what end, Tippy?” he asked after a minute.

Her mind wasn’t working. Her body felt bruised with need.

“End?” she said blankly.

His chest rose and fell. “I do not want to get married again,” he said flatly. “Period.”

Her eyes widened and she realized what she’d been insinuating. She had just enough wit left to spare her self any more embarrassment. “Now, just you wait a minute, buster,” she said, “that was not a proposal of marriage. I hardly know you. Can you cook and clean house? Do you know how to keep a checkbook? Can you darn a sock? And what about shopping in the mall? I absolutely could never think seriously about a man who didn’t like to shop!”

He blinked twice, deliberately, and twisted his ear. “Could you say that again?” he asked politely. “I think my brain took a brief recess…”

“Besides all that, I have high standards for a prospective husband, and you aren’t even in the running yet,” she continued, unabashed. “Stop rushing your fences, Grier. You’re only on probation here.”

His dark eyes twinkled. “Ooookay,” he drawled.

She pulled away from him with a toss of her head. “Don’t get a swelled head just because I agreed to go out with you. And remember that we have a chaperone, so don’t get any ideas.”

He began to smile. “Okay.”

She frowned. “Do you know any two-syllable words?”

He grinned wickedly and started to speak.

“Don’t you dare say it!”

His eyebrows arched.

“I know you don’t believe I can read minds, but I just read yours, and if I were your mother, I’d wash your mouth out with soap!”

The reference to his mother wiped the smile off his face and made him introspective.

She grimaced. “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He frowned. “Why?”

She avoided his eyes and moved toward a skeleton in a case. “I know about your mother. Crissy told me.”

He was utterly silent. “When?”

“After you made me cry,” she confessed, not liking the memory. “She told me it wasn’t personal, that you just didn’t like models. And she told me why.”

He rammed his hands deep into the pockets of his slacks. Terrible memories were eating at him.

She turned and looked up at him. “You can’t forget it, can you, after all those years? Hatred is an acid, Cash. It eats you up inside. And the only person it hurts is you.”

“You’d know,” he said curtly.

“Yes, I would,” she said, not taking offense. “I know how to hate. I had the living hell beaten out of me, so that I was in such pain that I couldn’t even fight back. I was bruised and bleeding, and afterward I was raped over and over again, screaming for help that never came, while my own mother…” She swallowed hard and averted her eyes.

He was sick to his stomach, looking at her, feeling her pain. “Somebody should have killed him,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone.

“Our next-door neighbor was a cop,” she said huskily. “I’ve always thought he might be my real father, because he was always looking out for me. He heard the screams and came running—fortunately, it was his night off. He arrested Stanton and my mother and had them both carried off to jail. He took me to juvenile hall himself. He was so kind to me.” She swallowed hard. “Everyone was kind. But my mother could talk her way out of murder, and so could Stanton when he really tried. I knew they’d find a way to get me back, and I’d have preferred death. So I sneaked out past a sleeping guard and took off.”

“Did they look for you?” he asked.

“Apparently, but Cullen covered my tracks and he had enough money to keep me safe. I was made legally his ward when I was fourteen, and my mother wasn’t stupid enough to try to take me away from him. He knew certain people in dangerous professions,” she added—with a wry smile at him—because he certainly fitted the category. “He had a friend who used to be big in mob circles, Marcus Carrera. He’s legitimate now. He has casinos down in the Bahamas and elsewhere, and he and Cullen were partners in a venture of some sort. He’s really reformed in recent years, although his reputation is enough to keep most people from making trouble for him.”

“Carrera’s not gay. I know him myself,” Cash mused. “He’s a decent sort, for a former gangster.”

“Anyway, Cullen told my mother that if she made any attempt to regain custody of me, he’d have a talk with Marcus. She knew about his reputation. She never tried to get custody of Rory, after that.”

“Do you see her?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “No. I don’t see her or talk to her, except through my attorney. But the last I heard she was down to her last dime and talking about the tabloids again.” She looked up at him. “I’m just starting in a new career. I can’t afford to have my name splattered all over in such a way that it would adversely affect my ability to work. Mud sticks. I could lose everything, including Rory, if she started talking about my past. She has nothing to lose.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU DON’T KNOW ME YET,” Cash told her quietly. “But I hope you know that I’d do anything I could for you and Rory. All you have to do is call and ask.”

She studied him worriedly. “It wouldn’t be fair to involve you,” she began.

“I have no family,” he said flatly. “Nobody, in all the world.”

“But you do,” she protested. “I mean, you told me that you have brothers and that your father’s still alive…”

His face hardened. “Except for Garon, my oldest brother, I haven’t seen my other brothers or my father in years,” he replied. “My father and I don’t speak.”

“And you and your brothers?” she pressed.

His eyes were dark and troubled. “Only Garon,” he repeated. “He came to see me a few weeks ago. He did say that the others wanted to bury the hatchet.”

“So you’re on speaking terms, at least.”

“You could call it that.”

Her thin brows came together. “You don’t forgive people, do you?”

He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t answer her, either. He turned his attention to the skeleton they were standing in front of.

“She must have been a very special person, your mother,” she ventured.

“She was quiet and gentle, shy with strangers. She loved to quilt, crochet and knit.” He sounded as if the words were being torn from him. “She wasn’t beautiful, or exciting. My father met the junior league model at a cattle show, where they were filming a fashion revue at the same time. He went crazy for her. My mother couldn’t compete. He was cruel to her, because she was in his way. She found out that she had cancer, and she didn’t tell anybody. She just gave up.” His eyes closed. “I stayed with her in the hospital. I wouldn’t even go to school, and my father stopped trying to make me. I was holding her hand when she died. I was nine years old.”

She didn’t even think about other people around them. She turned and put her arms around him, pressing close. “Go ahead,” she whispered at his throat. “Tell me.”

He hated this weakness. He hated it! But his arms closed around her slender body. The offer of comfort was irresistible. He’d held it inside for so long…

He sighed at her ear, his breath harsh and warm. “He had his mistress at the funeral, at my mother’s funeral,” he said coldly. “She hated me, and I hated her. She’d conned two of my three brothers, and they were crazy about her and furious with me because I wouldn’t let her near me. I saw right through her. I knew she was only after Dad’s property and his wealth. So to get even, she threw out all my mother’s things and told my father that I’d called her terrible names and that I’d make my father get rid of her.”

He drew in a long breath. “The result was predictable, I guess, but I never saw it coming. He sent me away to military school and refused to even let me come home at the holidays until I apologized for being rude to her.” He laughed coldly, his arms hurting around her slender body, but she never protested. “Before I left, I told him that I’d hate him until my dying day. And that I’d never set foot in his house again.”

“He must have seen through her eventually,” she prompted.

His arms loosened, just a little. “When I was twelve,” he replied, “he caught her in bed with one of his friends and kicked her out. She sued him for everything he had. That was when she told him that she’d lied about me, to get me out of the way. She laughed about it. She lost the lawsuit, but she’d cost him his oldest son. She rubbed it in, to get even.”

“How did you know?”

“He wrote me a letter. I refused to answer his phone calls. He said he was sorry, that he wanted me to come home. That he missed me.”

“But you wouldn’t go,” she guessed, almost to her self.

“No. I wouldn’t. I told him I’d never forgive him for what he did to my mother and not to contact me again. I told him if he wouldn’t pay to let me stay in the school, I’d work for my keep, but I wasn’t going back to live with him.” He closed his eyes, remembering the pain and grief and fury he’d felt that day. “So I stayed in military school, made good grades, got promotions. When I graduated, they said he was in the audience, but I never saw him.

“I went right into the army afterward, from one special ops assignment to another. Occasionally I did jobs in concert with other governments. When I got out of the army, I went freelance. I had nothing to live for and nothing to lose, and I got rich.” He stiffened. “I didn’t need anybody in the old days. I was hard as nails. Funny, nobody tells you that there are things you can’t live with, until you’ve already done them.”

Her soft hand reached up to his lean, scarred cheek, and traced it tenderly. “You’re still there,” she said quietly, and her eyes had an eerie paleness as they met his reluctant ones. “You’re trapped in your own past. You can’t get out, because you can’t let go of the pain and the hatred and the bitterness.”

“Can you?” he shot right back. “Can you forgive your attacker?”

She let out a soft breath. “Not yet,” she confessed. “But I’ve tried. And at least I’ve learned to put it in the back of my mind. For a long time, I hated the whole world and then Rory came to live with me. And I realized that I had to put him first and stop dwelling on the past. I can’t let go of it completely, but it’s not as much a burden as it was when I was younger.”

He traced her eyebrows with a lean forefinger. “I’ve never spoken of this to anyone. Ever.”

“I’m a clam,” she replied gently. “At work, I’m everyone’s confidant.”

“Same here,” he confessed with a light smile. “I tell them that governments would topple if I told what I know. Maybe they would, too.”

“My secrets aren’t that important. Feel better?” she asked, smiling up at him.

He sighed. “In fact, I do,” he said, surprised. He chuckled. “Maybe you’re a witch,” he mused, “putting spells on me.”

“I had an uncle who said our family came from Druids in ancient Ireland. Of course, he also said we had relatives who were priests and one who was a horse thief.” She laughed. “He hated my mother and tried to get custody of me when I was ten. He died of a heart at tack that same year.”

“Tough break.”

“My life has been one long tough break,” she replied. “Sort of like yours. We’ve both been through the wars and survived.”

“You don’t have my memories,” he said quietly.

“You might think of bad memories like boils,” she commented, not totally facetiously. “They get worse until you lance them.”

“Not mine, honey.”

Her eyebrows lifted. She was fascinated by the endearment, uttered in that soft, deep tone. She colored a little. Odd, because she hated that word when it was tossed around by a parade of would-be lovers who used it like a weapon against her femininity.

He lifted a single eyebrow and looked roguish. “You like that, do you?” he drawled. “And you know that I don’t use endearments as a rule, too, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I know a lot of things about you that I shouldn’t.”

His chin lifted and he looked down his long, straight nose at her. “I only thought you were dangerous in Jacobsville. Now I know you are.”

She grinned. “Glad you noticed.”

He laughed and let her go. “Come on. We’re going to qualify as an exhibit if we stand here much longer.” He held out his hand.

She cocked her head. “Is that the only body part you’re offering me?” she asked, and then colored wildly when she realized what she’d just said.

He burst out laughing, linking her fingers with his. “Don’t be pushy,” he chided. “We haven’t even had a torrid petting session yet.”

She cleared her throat. “Don’t get your hopes up. I have a prudish nature.”

“It won’t last long around me.”

“I call that conceit.”

“You won’t when you see me in action,” he teased, and his fingers contracted. His voice dropped as he leaned closer. “I know twelve really good positions, and I’m as slow as the blues in bed. If I weren’t so modest, I could even give you references. I am a sensual experience that you’d never forget.”

“And so modest,” she teased.

“A man with my skills can do without modesty,” he murmured wickedly.

She wouldn’t admit it, but the prospect made her utterly breathless. He saw that in her face. The smile grew broader.

THEY HAD LUNCH in a Japanese restaurant, where Tippy and Rory were fascinated to hear Cash converse fluently with the waiter. He was competent with chopsticks, too.

“I didn’t know you spoke Japanese,” Tippy ex claimed. “Have you been to Japan?”

“Several times,” he replied, lifting a piece of chicken to his mouth with the chopsticks. “I love it there.”

“Do you speak any other languages, Cash?” Rory wanted to know.

“About six, I think,” he replied lazily. He smiled at the boy’s fascination. “If you ever want to get into intelligence work, languages will get you further than a law degree.”

“No, you don’t,” Tippy told Rory when he started to open his mouth. “You’re going to get a nice job as a computer technician and get married and have a family.”

Rory glared at her. “I’ll get married when you do.”

Cash chuckled.

“Better yet,” Rory added, “I’ll get married when he does,” and he pointed to Cash.

“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Cash advised Tippy.

“Neither would I,” she had to admit.

He glanced at her curiously, but he didn’t smile. In fact, he was feeling sensations he’d never experienced in his life, and getting a vicious case of cold feet. This woman made him want things, need things, that he feared more than bullets. He ached to take her to bed, and it was becoming obvious that she would let him. It was a prospect that made his head swim. He could al most picture having that perfect body under his on crisp sheets, feeling her long legs curling around him, her full lips clinging to his mouth. She knew nothing about consensual sex, she’d said, but he could teach her. He had plenty of experience, plenty of skill, and he could introduce her to a veritable feast of physical pleasure. In fact, he was dying to do just that. Could she see it? Did she know?

Her eyes were full of delight in his company. She might be second cousin to a virgin, but she certainly had the intelligence to see desire in a man’s face, as well as in his body. Of course she knew. He felt trapped.

He forced himself not to look at her while he tried to decide what to do next. Coming to New York, he told himself angrily, had been a bad idea. He needed to get out, while there was still time.

HIS CHANGE OF ATTITUDE was all too evident to Tippy, who was suddenly very sensitive to nuances of expression in his hard, lean face.

She withdrew as well. She was polite and cheerful, but the same distance that was in Cash now was also in her.

They went back up to her apartment, where a boy about Rory’s age was standing at the door, ringing the bell impatiently. He turned at the approach of the others.

“Hey, Rory! Mom says she’ll take us to see that new fantasy flick, and you can spend the night!” He glanced at Tippy and Cash and grimaced. “I guess you won’t want to, though, since you’ve got company…”

“Oh, Cash isn’t company, Don, he’s family,” Rory said without hesitation, completely unaware of the expression on Cash’s face. “I’d love to go! Can I, sis?”

Don Hartley and his family lived next door, and they knew about Tippy’s troubles with her mother. They’d never let Rory out of their sight.

She hesitated. “Well…” she began.

“I’ll bet Cash is dying to take you out somewhere fancy, just the two of you,” Rory prompted. “And you won’t even have to bribe me!”

Cash burst out laughing. “We could go to the ballet,” he said. “I, uh, have tickets. I didn’t know if you’d want to go…”

“I love ballet,” she said huskily. “I wanted to study it when I was a child, but…I never had the opportunity.” She looked back at Don. “Okay, he can go. Just until breakfast, though. I won’t get to have him around for very long, because we start shooting again the day after New Year’s.”

“You’re joking!” Cash exclaimed.

“I’m not. The producer told us that his director has to start shooting a new film in Europe in March, so he’s in a hurry to get this one in the can.” She sighed.

“You’ll get bruised even more,” Rory groaned.

She shrugged. “What can I say?” she asked, and then grinned. “I’m a star!”

RORY PACKED an overnight bag and went next door. Cash returned to his hotel to change into a suit, while Tippy went grasping through her entire wardrobe looking for just the right dress. She’d only found it when Cash was at the door again.

She caught her breath at the sight of him in evening clothes, with a spotless white shirt and black tie, finely creased trousers and shoes so polished that they reflected the ceiling. His hair was loose at his neck, slightly wavy and jet-black. He looked devastatingly handsome.

“You’re going in a housecoat, then?” he asked, nod ding.

She pulled it closer. “I was looking for the right dress.”

He checked his watch. “You’ve got five minutes to find it,” he pointed out. “I have reservations at the Bull and Bear for six o’clock.”

Her jaw fell. “That’s one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city…”

“At the Waldorf-Astoria,” he added for her. “I know. The ballet starts at eight. I’m ready. If you’re not going in that—” he indicated the ankle-length blue housecoat “—you’d better get cracking.”

She left a vapor trail getting into her bedroom.

She wore an off-the-shoulder white velvet dress with a black bow, and topped it with a black velvet coat with a white lining. She left her hair long and used the faintest trace of makeup. She put on diamond earrings and a diamond necklace and bracelet. Without looking again in the mirror, she went out to join Cash.

He was browsing through her bookshelf when he heard the door open. He turned, and his face froze.

She felt suddenly insecure. “Should I wear some thing else?” she asked nervously.

He just looked at her, his dark eyes narrow and quiet. “I saw a painting in a gallery once,” he murmured, moving toward her slowly. “Of a fairy dancing in the moon light, laughing. You look like her.”

“Was she wearing a velvet coat, then?” she asked facetiously.

“I’m not joking.” He framed her face in his big hands. “I thought she was the most seductive creature I’d ever seen until right now.” His eyes fell to her soft mouth. “You take my breath away…!”

His hard lips settled on her mouth, slowly, gently, so that he didn’t frighten her. He drew her against him lazily, not forcefully, and his lips toyed with hers until he felt her tense body relax, until he felt her lips slacken. She took a jerky breath and slowly settled close against his hard chest. Her hands slid up to the nape of his strong neck. He could feel their coldness against his skin.

He lifted his head scant inches so that he could look into her beautiful pale green eyes. She was frightened. But she wasn’t fighting to get away. If anything, those eyes were glittery with desire.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised quietly.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said breathlessly.

“Are you sure?” he taunted at her mouth. He bit at it in quick, ardent little kisses that had an explosive effect on both of them. He caught her hips suddenly, riveted them to the powerful thrust of his body. She gasped, shivering at the sudden rush of hot pleasure that seethed in her veins at the intimate contact.

“Yes, you know what that is, don’t you, baby?” he ground out against her mouth. His hands tightened and his mouth hardened on her lips. “Do you want to feel it inside you?” he whispered at her ear.

“Cash!” She struggled helplessly, really frightened when she couldn’t get away.

He realized it, finally, and loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he bit off.

She didn’t move. Her eyes searched his. “Me, too. I forget…men…lose control,” she whispered.

“I don’t,” he replied curtly. “Not ever. Not until just now.”

She stared at him with wide, fascinated eyes. The stark confession should have frightened her. It had the opposite effect. He didn’t realize that it made him seem more vulnerable to her. It exorcised her fear in one long sigh.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and managed a soft smile. “I’m not frightened anymore.”

His fingers teased around her softly rounded chin. They moved to her mouth and toyed with her soft lips. He explored her, his fingers like an artist’s brush, touching and tracing…tormenting.

Her body rippled as his arm drew it closer. But her lips lifted and her eyes closed, in blatant invitation.

“You taste like cotton candy, Tippy,” he breathed as his mouth settled gently over her parted lips. “I could eat you alive…”

She felt the hardness of his lips brushing at hers, teasing and lifting, searching. She followed them blindly, hanging against him like a dove, living from second to second in his loose embrace. He wasn’t threatening. He wasn’t frightening. She loved the touch of his body against hers, the clean, crisp scent of his after shave. She loved the way he held her, with tenderness but also with strength and confidence.

Odd little tremors began to work through her legs, up her spine. She moved closer to Cash, uncertain. Her hands behind his neck began to link. Her body lifted, involuntarily, into closer contact. She would have died to have him.

He felt those responses and lifted his mouth from hers to search her confused eyes. “You want me. I know it, but I won’t take advantage. You’re safe,” he breathed. “It’s all right to let go. I won’t hurt you. I won’t force you. All right?”

She was still uncertain, but she nodded faintly and closed her eyes, waiting.

Her trust in him made his knees weak. He knew instinctively how hard this was for her, to give up control of her body to a man, after what she’d suffered in her youth. He clamped down hard on his own rising desire. He wanted to be tender with her. He wanted her to feel such pleasure that she’d never be able to look at another man as long as she lived…!

His mouth brushed hers softly, and then insistently. He let her responses guide him, drawing back slightly when she stiffened, pressing his advantage when she pushed closer to him. Seconds rushed by in a heated pulse of pleasure that grew and grew.

She moaned softly when his mouth grew hungry on her lips, and her body lifted up against his with real need. He felt the desire funnel up in her, felt her own hunger kindle from contact with his.

Yes, he thought feverishly, she wanted him. Even if she didn’t know it yet. He reached around her and lifted her completely off the floor in his embrace, and his mouth became passionate on her soft lips.

She shivered at the need in him that she could feel like a living pulse. His mouth was fierce in its possession of her lips, his body began to tauten. She heard him groan huskily into her mouth as his arms tightened roughly at her back.

She should have been frightened. He might never lose control with another woman, but he was quickly losing it with her. She was flattered at the need she sensed in him. She recalled dazedly what he’d told her once, about it having been a long time between women. He was hungry and she was apparently willing. What if he didn’t want to stop? What if he couldn’t stop?

He felt her enthusiasm wane and he drew away from her at once, letting her slip back to her feet. He lifted his head, watching her, his face wiped clean of expression. Only his glittery dark eyes were alive in it.

She swallowed hard. “Just checking,” she managed weakly.

“To see if I really could stop?” he mused with a smile. She nodded, embarrassed.

He traced her swollen mouth. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Neither are you.” She hid her face against him for a moment, remembering the blatant question he’d asked her earlier. Even in memory, it aroused her. She thought of feeling him deep inside her body. She shivered with exquisite pleasure. But just as she started to say some thing equally blatant to him, he drew back.

He bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “We’d better go. We’re going to throw everything off schedule.”

She looked up at him, hesitating. She felt hot all over, strained, hungry. Her eyes were full of unsatisfied need. “If I asked you…”

“Yes?” he prompted.

She swallowed and forced herself to speak. “If I asked you to make love to me…”

He pressed his thumb against her swollen mouth. His eyes flared. “I want to! You can’t imagine how much. But I don’t start things I can’t finish.”

“But I could finish this,” she said with painful emphasis.

“I could, with you!”

His body actually shuddered. He put her away from him. He didn’t dare accept that invitation. He should be shot for what he’d already done and said tonight.

“Well, you’re not going to. Not tonight. I offered you dinner and the ballet,” he said brusquely, moving to the door. “Only that!” He glanced at her. “Are you coming?”

She felt ashamed that she’d made such a rash offer, and to Cash Grier of all people. She was furious at him for making her feel that way. He’d started it, after all. Throwing his perfect body at her like that and then slapping her down when she got aroused! Were all men like that?

“Dinner and the ballet,” she agreed curtly, wrapping her coat around her tightly and buttoning it up to her chin. “And don’t worry, I won’t try to seduce you in the front seat of the car!”

He glared down at her. “Thanks. I was really worried.”

She swept by him in a fury.

They ate without knowing what, and Tippy felt guilty, because it was delicious. They went from the elegant restaurant to the ballet, where she sat beside Cash and never saw what was happening on stage except for noting the beautiful colors and how they reflected on the dancers. She was angry. She was elated. She was eaten up with physical desire that she’d never felt before in her life. She was blinded by her hunger for him. She wanted to jump on him and tear his clothes off where he was sitting. Outraged and mortified by her own helpless urges, she ignored him throughout the performance.

As if he understood completely what she was feeling, he didn’t say a word or even touch her until the bal let was over and they were filing out of the theater. He took her arm to help her across the street to the parking garage, but she was like steel to the touch.

He unlocked the door and she got inside, reaching idly for her seat belt. He glanced at her as he started the engine and pulled out of the parking space. He felt remorseful about refusing what she’d offered him. But he was honest. He had nothing to give. Nothing at all. It would have been unfair to take advantage of something she couldn’t help. He was flattered that she could feel such attraction for him, but he didn’t trust it. He didn’t trust her. He was still stunned that he’d spilled his darkest secrets to a woman who was, after all, little more than a stranger. Except that she didn’t feel like a stranger. She felt…familiar. Too familiar.

He whipped the car out into traffic with muted violence.

She noticed. She turned her evening bag over in her lap and looked out the window at the crowded streets with their floods of neon lights and glimmering messages on billboards.

“Don’t get conceited, Grier,” she said sharply. “I’m sure there are at least five or six other men on the planet who could make me feel like ravishing them on the sidewalk.”

He made a rough sound in his throat.

She didn’t look to see if it was laughter or something else. “Besides, I can always take a cold shower and go in for team sports…”

The car jerked under his hands as he tried to cope with what he was feeling. “Will you give it a rest?” he asked after a minute. “We both know you’d start screaming the minute I laid hands on you with intent.”

She started. “Is that what you think?”

“I’ve been in law enforcement and the military most of my life,” he said, slowing in traffic for a turn. “I know more about rape victims than you do.”

She didn’t say anything else, but she was watching him, waiting.

He glanced at her as he made the turn. “You may have the best intentions in the world, but it’s not going to be that easy for you to be with a man—even a man you think you want. One of the roughest rape cases I ever testified in was a similar circumstance. A young girl who’d been raped tried to make it with her new boy friend. But she couldn’t go through with it and he couldn’t stop.”

“What happened?”

“She started screaming about the time her parents came home. They had the boy arrested. She tried to recall the charges, but it was too late. He did get probation—it was a first offense—but he never spoke to her again. She really loved him. She just couldn’t have sex with him.”

She folded her arms together over her coat and shivered.

“You get the picture?” he asked tersely.

She nodded. Her eyes went back to the passing storefronts.

His lips flattened together. “I couldn’t live with it if I lost control and forced you, okay?” he admitted finally.

Her caught breath was audible. “But I offered,” she said huskily.

He glared at her. “What would that mean if I left you with more scars than you’ve already got?”

Her anger evaporated and she studied him quietly. “I’ve never felt like this with anyone since it happened,” she confessed. “I was very attracted to Cullen, but he found women repulsive. Even so, it wasn’t like this. I’m on fire,” she said with a nervous little laugh. “I ache all over. It’s almost like pain. All I can think of is how it would feel to be with you in a bed all night.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel until they turned white, while he tried to convince himself that this was a disaster waiting to happen.

“But if you’re not interested, you’re not interested. I guess you’re worried about that marriage thing. I don’t have any plans to propose to you, no matter how good you are in bed, if that would change your mind,” she promised.

He laughed in spite of himself. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re impotent?” she murmured dryly.

He glared at her. “I am not impotent.”

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