“To Cabot.” Drew’s voice had an edge now, a curiously ragged edge. “Why him, Spencer? Why did you run to him?”
She shook her head slightly, almost helplessly. “It seemed so clear then. The only answer. Now . . . I don’t know. Because he was uncomplicated, I guess. Because he was brash instead of controlled. Because he wasn’t larger than life. Everything that he was lay on the surface of him, easily seen and touched and understood. He had no secrets or shadows, no complexities, and I thought he was—safer. I’d known him for years, and for years he’d been saying he was going to marry me. Even after I got engaged to you, he sent me flowers and called me, and he kept saying he was going to marry me.”
“You didn’t love him.” It wasn’t a question, and yet there was a question in it.
Spencer hesitated, then shook her head again. “No. But I thought I could learn to love him. He—he didn’t expect anything of me, Drew, ask anything except that I be. I didn’t feel as if there was something I had to live up to with him, some image of myself that wasn’t real. I didn’t know what you wanted of me, but I was afraid that whatever you wanted I didn’t have. He just wanted to love me, I thought, and I believed it would be better to be loved—without complications.”
Drew was silent for a moment, still motionless, then said flatly, “What happened?”
This time her soft laugh was wry. “If I’d been older or wiser maybe I would have realized that any love with no depth couldn’t possibly last, any more than a man with no depth could feel anything except fleetingly. Reece was like a child with a bright, shiny new toy. Intense, passionate, almost obsessed. Until the next toy caught his attention. Once I was no longer out of his reach I became less . . . desirable, I think. He couldn’t love me forever. He couldn’t even love me for long.”
“Who asked for the divorce?”
She wondered at the question, but answered it honestly. “I did. I wasn’t as hurt as I probably deserved to be when I realized Reece was habitually unfaithful, but I was more than a little humiliated by my own stupidity. There were no big fights between us, I just said I was leaving.”
“He didn’t contest the divorce?”
Spencer’s voice held real, if rueful, amusement. “He barely noticed it. He had a new toy he was trying to entice away from her husband, and that was occupying all of his attention.” Then her amusement faded, and she said, “His family didn’t like it. I think they were afraid I’d drag all the dirty linen through the courts. Before I could file the papers, their lawyer did. So, officially, Reece divorced me on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. I didn’t care. I just wanted out.”
She drew a deep breath and held her voice steady. “I wish I could make it all sound more dramatic somehow, or at least more compelling. I wish I could make my motives sound less vague and selfish. But I can’t. I can’t, Drew. I never meant to hurt anyone. I was just afraid.”
There was a long silence, and then he said, “You were so afraid of me you couldn’t tell me any of this.”
Anxious that he had misunderstood, she said, “I wasn’t afraid you’d hurt me or—or anything like that. I was just—oh, in awe of you, I guess. I didn’t feel close to you, or understand you at all.”
“Then why in God’s name did you say yes when I asked you to marry me?” he demanded with suppressed violence.
Spencer wanted badly to reach out and touch him, wanted to crawl into his arms and hold on to him with all the desperate love churning inside her. But she held herself still and kept her voice quiet and steady. “Because I was in love with you.”
“What? Spencer—”
“Drew, I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t understand myself. Everything I felt then was so damn confusing. When you asked me to marry you, I’d been mooning over you like a silly little girl for two years, building fantasies around you. I had no idea you wanted to marry me until you said so. Then I didn’t know why you wanted me.”
“I told you I loved you,” he said roughly.
“Yes, but . . . I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t, even though I wanted to. You were always so calm and you never seemed to feel very much except amusement. You were polite and kind, and sometimes I saw you watching me, but you seemed detached. What I felt was so—wild, and I never saw anything like that in you.”
He was silent.
Spencer took a deep breath. “I said yes because it was like a dream falling into my lap, and it was only later that I started wondering if there was anything real in the dream. I was sure you wanted a wife as assured and sophisticated as you were—and I wasn’t. I thought you’d been fooled by me like everyone else, and it was terrifying for me to imagine what you’d think when you discovered the truth.”
“What truth?” Drew demanded almost harshly. “What is it you think you were hiding?”
“Me.” She felt very tired now, and the room seemed colder than it had been only minutes before. “The real me. Always uneasy and unsure and frightened. I wasn’t woman enough for a man like you, and I knew it.”
When he moved suddenly it caught her off guard, and before she could say a word she found herself lying back on the bed with Drew leaning over her. “Just for the record,” he said in a taut voice, “I’m not made of gold, Spencer. I’m not a schoolgirl’s fairy-tale prince and I’m sure as hell not larger than life. I’m just a man, like any other.”
“Drew—”
“You were the one who was fooled,” he continued in the same taut, relentless voice. “About me and about yourself. The mask you wore was almost transparent—everyone saw through it, including me. We could see the shyness and uncertainty and sweetness, even the fear sometimes. But there was something so . . . graceful about the way you tried, so gentle and gallant. We all saw that, too. Spencer, why do you think I handled you so carefully? Why I was such a bloody gentleman instead of carrying you off over my shoulder as I wanted to? If I’d believed you were the assured, confident woman you tried so hard to be I’d have married you out of the schoolroom instead of waiting for more than two long years to even ask you.”
Staring up at him, all she could think of to say was, “I didn’t know you wanted to marry me then.”
“I made up my mind to marry you that first night,” he said, his voice still tight. “But you were too young, and I knew it. So I waited. I knew you were wary, nervous of me, that you were more comfortable with all the damned polite social rules and I tried to be patient and not overwhelm you. You were like a shy little bird, so beautiful and sweet, and so fragile I was almost afraid to touch you.”
She lifted a hand to his face almost unconsciously, feeling the hard tension there, and her heart was pounding, aching. If he had felt so much then, and she hadn’t hurt him too badly, then maybe there was a chance. . . . But he went on speaking before she could complete that thought, and hope died a silent, agonizing death inside her.
“When Allan called me to the house, I knew there was something wrong,” he said, his voice as hard as his face now. “I’d never seen him so upset. He didn’t know much, he said. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that you’d gone, and you’d eloped with Reece Cabot. He gave me the ring, the one I’d given you, and I wanted to throw the damned thing across the room. I wanted to go after you, tear you away from Cabot and carry you off somewhere.”
He laughed suddenly, a strange, harsh sound. “Of course, I didn’t do that. It wouldn’t have been civilized. I told Allan very quietly that I hoped you’d be happy, and I left. I left the country, getting as far away as I could, because I knew if I saw you with his ring on your finger, I wouldn’t be able to be civilized about it. I didn’t come back until I thought I could. When was that, Spencer, when did we see each other again?”
She swallowed with difficulty, and whispered, “More than two years.”
“Twenty-six months, almost to the day. It was at the opening of a gallery. You were divorced by then. You were with Allan, and he was the one who spoke to me first. All three of us were polite and
civilized.”
Spencer was biting her bottom lip so hard that she tasted blood, staring up at him. Her hand fell away from him, because she couldn’t bear to go on feeling the granite stillness of his face. “I’m sorry,” she said almost inaudibly.
“Do you think that helps?” His voice was suddenly quieter, not so harsh as before.
She drew a ragged breath. “Nothing I can say is going to help. It’s too late for that.”
“Is it?” He bent his head, his mouth brushing hers very lightly, almost absently, again and again. “This helps. Knowing I can make you want me. Knowing he never found the fire in you. Knowing you belong to me now. You do belong to me, don’t you, sweetheart?”
She would have denied it if she could have, but he had to know by now. And what did it matter, after all? She’d already given him all she was; admitting it aloud wouldn’t change anything, and keeping it to herself wouldn’t protect her from hurt. There was still nothing she could deny him, nothing at all.
“Yes,” she admitted softly.
His arms gathered her closer, pushing the covers away, and his mouth hardened slowly with desire as he kissed her. Spencer clung to him, and even as her body responded wildly to his passion she was filled with the painful knowledge that she had given her heart and soul to a man who could never love her again—because he had loved her once.
A long time later, as she lay close to his side almost too pleasantly exhausted to think, she murmured, “Drew?”
“Hmm?”
“You said I’d been fooled by you. What did you mean?”
His arms tightened around her. “We all wear masks. Some of us have just had more experience at it than others. Go to sleep, honey. We have to be up in a few hours.”
Spencer closed her eyes, but it was a long time before she drifted off to sleep. Where would they go from here? She no longer feared that Drew would be cruel to her, even though she had a better understanding now of just how badly she’d hurt him, but it was clear to her that all he wanted from her was passion. He’d as good as said it himself. She belonged to him now, and that in some way helped ease his bitterness.
Maybe she owed him that, no matter what it cost her. In any case, it wouldn’t be her who walked—or ran—away this time. She loved him too much to end this even if she could summon the strength and will to do it, and she didn’t know what she would do when he ended it. All she could do now was to go on a step at a time. A day at a time.
She slept deeply and dreamlessly, waking to the delightful, drowsily sensual feeling of warm kisses. She opened her eyes and smiled when she saw him sitting on the edge of the bed. Her embarrassment of the night was forgotten. He’d been convincing when he’d said he loved her passionate response to him, and since the heat of their desire was a tie between them—the only possible tie—she couldn’t feel it was in any way wrong.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling just a little.
Spencer realized that he must have been up a while. He was dressed in jeans and a sweater, was freshly shaved and his golden hair was still damp from the shower. “Good morning,” she murmured, stretching slightly and wincing at a few twinges.
Drew’s intent gaze never missed much, and his smile faded. “Was I too rough?”
She pushed herself into a sitting position and absently held the covers to her breasts as she looked at him. “No, of course not. I’m just not used to . . .” She felt a touch of heat in her face, and shrugged a bit defensively.
He looked at her a moment longer with probing eyes, then cupped her warm cheek with one hand and leaned over to kiss her slowly and thoroughly. When he straightened, she was a little breathless and he was smiling again.
“Why don’t you take a hot shower while I order breakfast,” he said. “That should help.”
Spencer felt self-conscious about getting out of the bed naked even though, heaven knew, she had no secrets from him, but she pushed the covers back and slid from the bed when he stood up, telling herself not to be an idiot. She was so intent on not being embarrassed that she was startled when Drew’s hand grasped her wrist with a sudden hard strength that wasn’t quite painful.
She had taken a step toward a chair where she’d left fresh clothing the night before, but was stopped abruptly by his grip. Before she could say anything he turned her around and his free hand lifted to touch her back.
“What the hell is this?”
Spencer couldn’t see his face, but his voice was so harsh that for a moment she couldn’t think and had no idea what he was talking about. Then, as his fingers very gently touched her, she remembered. It had been a few days since her tumble off the horse, and she’d more or less forgotten about it. Unfortunately, she bruised very easily, and though she hadn’t bothered to examine herself, she realized that the mark of the wooden jump pole was probably a multicolored band across her back by now.
“When I hit the jump Friday,” she explained, trying to look back over her shoulder at him but still unable to see his face. “It doesn’t hurt. I just bruise easily.”
His touch brushed across her skin, halfway between her shoulder blades and the small of her back. The grip on her wrist finally relaxed and he bent his head to kiss her bare shoulder as he released her. “Go take your shower,” he said in an odd, gruff voice.
Before she could turn toward him or respond, he had gone quickly from the bedroom and into the sitting room. Spencer stood there for a moment staring after him, then gathered her clothing and went into the bathroom. She put her tumbled hair up carelessly, and before getting into the shower paused a moment to look at her back in the big mirror over the vanity.
It looked as if someone had been beating her. The mark of the pole she’d hit was most obvious, a solid line of bluish yellow from one side of her back to the other and more than two inches thick. But there was another, fainter bruise running diagonally across her back—the second pole, she supposed, although she didn’t remember feeling it hit her—and a number of lavender splotches of various sizes. From rocks on the ground where she’d landed, presumably.
A bit ruefully, Spencer realized now why she’d been so uncomfortable on the plane from D.C. No wonder Drew had been so startled to see the marks on her. They looked vicious. But they really weren’t painful now, and she didn’t think any more about them as she got into the shower.
Drew heard the water running, and though it distracted him from the note he’d just found pushed underneath the door, his thoughts this time were less sensual than worried. The bruises on her back had been another reminder of how fragile she was, how susceptible to hurt. He’d been vividly conscious of how delicate her slender body was as she lay beneath him in their bed, and even though he knew she was both stronger and tougher than she looked, she seemed to him terrifyingly defenseless.
All she had to shield her was a steely core of will, and though that had brought her through the past difficult months he was worried that more pressure would shatter her. She’d already endured so much stress and she doubted her own strength, her own ability to cope. He knew that—he’d seen the moments of uncertainty in her eyes.
She was very vulnerable right now, risking a great deal of herself in the attempt to find her father’s dream and put it into his hands. Failure might destroy her; even a setback or a delay could be too much for her. Drew tapped the note against one hand, staring at the message he didn’t have to read again. What would this do to her?
And what would it do to her if he forced her to stop, if he ended it here and now? It was something he would have done in an instant if he hadn’t been so certain that the action might well do her more harm than going on. But the haunting fear of losing her was cold and tight inside him now, because there was a very real danger. If she went on. If she got anywhere near the man who had beaten them to the cross.
He could stop it now, he knew, by refusing to go any farther. Spencer lacked the experience necessary to find elusive information in this dangerous game, and when he told her their competitor
had already beaten them to the cross, she would be unable to follow the trail without his help. But she would try, he knew, unless he could somehow stop her, and that kind of failure would surely mark her. The cross meant more than a last gift to her father; right or wrong, consciously or unconsciously, to Spencer it represented a vital test of her own self-confidence.
She wouldn’t be willing to call off the hunt; she wouldn’t stay put here or return to the States without a fight. And even if she trusted him now, he didn’t think she’d let him continue alone.
What she had told him in the dark hours of the night had stunned him in more ways than one, but what he remembered most clearly was the pain in her soft voice when she had talked of her feelings of inadequacy. She seemed to see herself in a distorted mirror, where the reflection was always lacking. He thought she had a great deal more quiet confidence now than she’d had ten years ago, but it was a fragile assurance she had little faith in.
If she failed in her quest for the cross, it could damage that shaky confidence beyond repair, and if he forced her to go home so that he could search alone it would be even worse.
Drew hesitated a moment, checked his watch briefly, then sat on the couch and reached for the phone. He’d seen the message on the nightstand when he’d gotten up, and though it took him a moment’s consideration, he did indeed know where in Madrid to call. He was a little impatient as he waited for the connections to be made, because he didn’t want Spencer learning his news by listening to him tell someone else. He heard the shower cut off just as a very irritated voice in Spain demanded to know what the hell he wanted.
“Help,” Drew responded mildly.
“Oh, it’s you.” Kane Pendleton’s aggravated tone smoothed somewhat, though he still sounded rather like a bear that had been prodded with a sharp stick a few times too many. “You don’t happen to know a crazy sheik with a suicide wish and a lust for redheads, do you?”
“I can think of one or two,” Drew murmured, amused despite the dark thoughts and emotions churning inside him. “Are you ready to trade her in so soon?”