Long, Tall Texans: Regan/Todd
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Diana Palmer
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23
Chapter One
THE TALL, SILVER-HAIRED man stood quietly apart from the rest of the mourners, his eyes, narrowed and contemptuous, on the slender, black-clad figure beside his sister. His cousin Barry was dead, and that woman was responsible. Not only had she tormented her husband of two years into alcoholism, but she’d allowed him to get behind the wheel of a car when he was drunk and he’d gone off a bridge to his death. And there she stood, four million dollars richer, without a single tear in her eyes. She looked completely untouchable—and Ted Regan knew that she had been, as far as her husband had been concerned.
His sister noticed his cold stare and left the widow’s side to join him.
“Stop glaring at her. How can you be so unfeeling?” Sandy asked angrily. His sister had dark hair. At forty, he was fifteen years older than she, and prematurely gray. They shared the same pale blue eyes, though, and the same temper.
“Am I being unfeeling?” he asked with a careless smile, and raised his smoking cigarette to his mouth.
“You promised you were going to give that up,” she reminded him.
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “I did. I only smoke when I’m under a lot of stress, and only outdoors.”
“I wasn’t worried about secondhand smoke. You’re my brother, and I care about you,” she said simply.
He smiled, and his hand touched her face briefly. “I’ll try to quit. Again,” he said wryly. He glanced at the widow with cold eyes. “She’s a case, isn’t she? I haven’t seen a single tear. They were married for two years.”
“Nobody knows what goes on inside a marriage, Ted,” she reminded him quietly.
“I suppose not,” he mused. “I’ve never wanted to marry anybody, but it seems to work out for a few people.”
“Like the Ballengers here in Jacobsville,” she agreed with a smile. “They go on forever. I envy them.”
Ted wasn’t going to touch that line with a pole. He drew on the cigarette, and his harsh gaze went back to the heavily veiled woman by the black limousine.
“Why the veil?” he asked coldly. “Is she afraid Barry’s mother may wonder why there aren’t any tears in her big blue eyes?”
“You’re so cynical and harsh, Ted, it’s no wonder to me that you’ve never married,” she said with resignation. “I’ve heard people say that no woman in south Texas would be brave enough to take you on!”
“There’s no woman in south Texas that I’d have,” he countered.
“Least of all, Coreen Tarleton,” she added for him, because the way he was looking at her best friend spoke volumes.
“She’s even younger than you,” he said curtly. “Twenty-four to my forty,” he added quietly. “Years too young for me, even if I were interested. Which I am not,” he added with a speaking glance.
“She isn’t what you think,” Sandy said.
“I’m glad you’re loyal to the people you love, tidbit, but you’re never going to convince me that the merry widow over there is grieving.”
“You’ve always been unkind to her,” Sandy said.
He stiffened. “She was a pest once.”
Sandy didn’t reply. She’d often thought that Ted had been in love for the first time in his life with Coreen, but he’d let the age difference stand between them. He was forty, but he had the physique of a man half that age, and the expensive dark suit he was wearing flattered it. He was a working millionaire. He never sat at a desk. He was slender and strong, and as handsome as the late cowboy star Randolph Scott. But he had no use for women now; not since Coreen had married.
“You’re coming back to the house with us, aren’t you?” Sandy asked after a minute. “They’re reading the will after lunch.”
“In a hurry, is she?” he asked icily.
“It was Barry’s mother’s idea, not hers,” Sandy shot back angrily.
“No surprises there,” he remarked, his blue eyes searching for Barry’s small, elegant mother in her black designer suit. “Tina probably would enjoy dumping Coreen on the front lawn in her underwear.”
“She does seem a little hostile.”
Ted ground out the cigarette under the heel of his highly polished dress boot. “Is that a surprise?” he asked frankly. “Coreen killed her son.”
“Ted!”
His blue eyes looked hard enough to cut diamond. “She never loved him,” he told her. “She married him because her father had died and she had nothing, not even a house to live in. And then she spent two years teasing and taunting him and making him unhappy. He used to cry on my shoulder....”
“How? You never went near their house, except once, to visit for a few hours,” she recalled. “You even refused to be best man at his wedding.”
He averted his eyes. “He came to Victoria pretty often to see me,” he said. “And he wasn’t a stranger to a telephone. We had business dealings together. I heard all about Coreen from him,” he added darkly. “She drove him to drink.”
“Coreen is my friend,” she responded. “Even if I believed that about her, it wouldn’t matter. Friends accept the bad with the good.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have friends.”
How well Sandy knew it, too. Ted didn’t trust anyone that close, man or woman.
“You could make the gesture of giving her your condolences,” she said finally.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Why should I give her sympathy when she doesn’t care that her husband is dead? Besides, I don’t do a damned thing for the sake of appearances.”
She made a sound in her throat and went back to Coreen.
The ride back to the redbrick mansion was short. Coreen was quiet. They were almost to the front door before she looked at Sandy and spoke.
“Ted was saying something about me, wasn’t he?” she asked, her voice strained. Her face was very pale in its frame of short, straight black hair and her deep blue eyes were tragic.
Sandy grimaced. “Yes.”
“You don’t have to soft-pedal Ted’s attitude to me,” came the wistful reply. “I’ve known Ted ever since you and I became friends in college, remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” Sandy agreed.
“Ted never liked me, even before I married his cousin.” She didn’t mention how she knew it, or that Ted had been the catalyst who caused her to rush headlong into a marriage that she hadn’t even wanted.
“Ted doesn’t want commitment. He plays the field,” Sandy said evasively.
“His mother really affected him, didn’t she?” Coreen knew about their childhood, because Sandy had told her.
“Yes, she did. He’s been a rounder most of his life because of it,” she added on a sigh. “I used to think he had a case on you, before you married,” she added with a swift glance. “He was violent about you. He still is. Odd, wouldn’t you say?”
Coreen didn’t betray her thoughts by a single expression. She’d learned to hide her feelings very well. Barry had homed in on any sign of weakness or vulnerability. She’d made the mistake once, only once, of talking about Ted, during the first weeks of her marriage to Barry. She hadn’t realized until later that she’d given away her feelings for him. Barry had gotten drunk that night and hurt her badly. It had taught her to keep her deepest feelings carefully concealed.
“It will all be over soon,” Sandy remarked.
“Will it?” Coreen asked quietly. Her long, elegant fingers were contracting on her black clutch bag.
“Why did Tina want the will read so quickly?” Sandy asked suddenly.
“Because she’s sure that Barry left everything to her, including the house,” she said quietly. “You know how opposed she was to our marriage. She’ll have me out the front door by nightfall if the will did make her sole beneficiary. And I’ll bet it did. It would be like Barry. Even when we were married, I had to live on a household allowance of a hundred dollars a week, and bills and groceries had to come out of that.”
Her best friend stared at her. It had suddenly dawned on her that the dress Coreen was wearing wasn’t a new one. In fact, it was several years out of style.
“I only have the clothes I bought before I married,” Coreen said with ragged pride, avoiding her friend’s eyes. “I’ve made do. It didn’t matter.”
All Sandy could think about was that Tina was wearing a new designer dress and driving a new Lincoln. “But, why? Why did he treat you that way?”
Coreen smiled sadly. “He had his reasons,” she said evasively. “I don’t care about the money,” she added quietly. “I can type and I have the equivalent of an associate degree in sociology. I’ll find a way to make a living.”
“But Barry would have left you something, surely!”
She shook her head at Sandy’s expression. “He hated me, didn’t you know? He was used to women fawning all over him. He couldn’t stand being anyone’s second choice,” she said enigmatically. “At least there won’t be any more fear,” she added with nightmarish memories in her eyes. “I’m so ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“The relief I feel,” she whispered, as if the car had ears. “It’s over! It’s finally over! I don’t even care if people think I killed him.” She shivered.
Sandy was curious, but she didn’t pry. Coreen would tell her one day. Barry had done everything in his power to keep her from seeing Coreen. He didn’t like anyone near his wife, not even another woman. At first, Sandy had thought it was obsessive love for Coreen that caused him to behave that way. But slowly it dawned on her that it was something much darker. Whatever it was, Coreen had kept to herself, despite Sandy’s careful probing.
“It will be nice not to have to sneak around to have lunch with you once in a while,” Sandy said.
Worried blue eyes met hers through the delicate lace veil. “You didn’t tell Ted that we had to meet like that?”
“No. I haven’t told Ted,” was the reply. Sandy hesitated. “If you must know, Ted wouldn’t let me talk about you at all.”
The thin shoulders moved restlessly and the blue eyes went back to the window. “I see.”
“I don’t,” Sandy muttered. “I don’t understand him at all. And today I’m actually ashamed of the way he’s acting.”
“He loved Barry.”
“Maybe he did, in his way, but he never tried to see your side of it. Barry wasn’t the same with another man as he was with you. Barry bullied you, but most people don’t try to bully Ted, if they’ve got any sense at all.”
“Yes, I know.”
The limousine stopped and the driver got out to open the door for them.
“Thanks, Henry,” Coreen said gratefully.
Henry was in his fifties, an ex-military man with close-cropped gray hair and muscle. He’d been her salvation since he came to work for Barry six months ago. There had been gossip about that, and some people thought that Coreen was cuckolding her husband. Actually Henry had served a purpose that she couldn’t tell anyone about.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Tarleton,” Henry said gently.
Sandy went into the house with Coreen, noticing with curiosity that there seemed to be no maid, no butler, no household staff at all. In a house with eight bedrooms and bathrooms, that seemed odd.
Coreen saw the puzzled look on her friend’s face. She took off her veiled hat and laid it on the hall table. “Barry fired all the staff except Henry. He tried to fire Henry, too, but I convinced him that he needed a chauffeur.”
There was no reply.
Coreen turned and stared at Sandy levelly. “Do you think I’m sleeping with Henry?”
Sandy pursed her lips. “Not now that I’ve seen him,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes.
Coreen laughed, for the first time in days. She turned and led the way into the living room. “Sit down and I’ll make a pot of coffee.”
“You will not. I’ll make it. You’re the one who needs to rest. Have you slept at all?”
The shorter woman’s shoulders lifted and fell. She was just five foot five in her stocking feet, for all her slenderness. Sandy, three inches taller, towered over her. “The nightmares won’t stop,” she confessed with a small twist of her lips.
“Did the doctor give you anything to make you sleep?”
“I don’t take drugs.”
“A sleeping pill when someone has died violently is hardly considered a drug.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to be out of control.” She sat down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to...?”
The front door opened and closed. There hadn’t been a knock, and only one person considered himself privileged enough to just walk in. Coreen refused to look up as Ted entered the living room, loosening his tie as he came. He wasn’t wearing his Stetson, or even the dress boots he usually favored. He looked elegant and strange in his expensive suit.
“I was just about to make coffee,” Sandy said, giving him a warning look. “Want some?”
“Sure. A couple of leftover biscuits would be nice, too. I didn’t stop for breakfast.”
“I’ll see what I can find to fix.” Sandy didn’t mention that it was odd no one had offered to bring food. It was an accepted tradition in most rural areas, and this was Jacobsville, Texas. It was a very close-knit community.
Ted didn’t have any inhibitions about asking embarrassing questions. He sat down in the big armchair across from the burgundy velvet-covered sofa where Coreen was sitting.
“Why didn’t anybody bring food?” he asked her bluntly. He smiled coldly. “Do your neighbors think you killed him, too?”
Coreen felt the nausea in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it down and lifted cool blue eyes to his. She ignored the blatant insult. “We had no close neighbors, nor did we have any close friends. Barry didn’t like people around us.”
His expression tautened as he glared at her. “And you didn’t like Barry around you,” he said with soft venom. “He told me all about you, Coreen. Everything.”
She could imagine the sort of things Barry had confided. He liked having people think she was frigid. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead, where the beginnings of a headache were forming. “Don’t you have a business to run?” she asked heavily. “Several businesses, in fact?”
He crossed one long leg over the other. “My favorite cousin is dead,” he reminded her. “I’m here for the funeral.”
“The funeral is over,” she said pointedly.
“And you’re four million dollars to the good. At least, until the will is read. Tina’s on the way back from the cemetery.”
“Urged on by you, no doubt,” she said.
His eyebrows arched. “I didn’t need to urge her.”
The pain and torment of the past two years ate at her like acid. Her eyes were haunted. “No, of course you didn’t.”
She got up from the sofa, elegant in the expensive black dress that clung to her slender—too slender—body. He didn’t like noticing how drawn she looked. He knew that she hadn’t loved Barry; she certainly wasn’t mourning him.
“Don’t expect much,” he said with a cold smile.
The accusation in his eyes hurt. “I didn’t kill Barry,” she said.
He stood up, too, slowly. “You let him get into a car and drive when he’d had five neat whiskeys.” He nodded at her look of surprise. “I grew up in Jacobsville. I’m acquainted with most people who live here, and you know that Sandy and I have just moved back into the old homestead. Everybody’s been talking about Barry’s death. You were at a party and he wanted you to drive him home. You refused. So he went alone, and shot right off a bridge.”
So that was how the gossips had twisted it. She stared at Ted without speaking. Sandy hadn’t mentioned that they were coming home to Jacobsville. How was she going to survive living in the same town with Ted?
“No defense?” he challenged mockingly. “No excuses?”
“Why bother?” she returned wearily. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“That’s a fact.” He stuck his hands into his pockets, aware of loud noises in the kitchen. Sandy, reminding him that she was still around.
Coreen folded her hands in front of her to keep them from trembling. Did he have to look at her with such cold accusation?
“Barry wrote to me two weeks ago. He said that he’d changed his will and that I was mentioned in it.” He stared at her mockingly. “Didn’t you know?”
She didn’t. She only knew that Barry had changed the will. She knew nothing of what was in it.
“Tina’s in it, too, I imagine,” he continued with a smile so smug that it made her hands curl.
She was tired. Tired of the aftermath of the nightmare she’d been living, tired of his endless prodding. She pushed back her short hair with a heavy sigh. “Go away, Ted,” she said miserably. “Please...”
She was dead on her feet. The ordeal had crushed her spirit. She felt tears threatening and she turned away to hide them, just as their betraying glitter began to show. She caught her toe in the rug and stumbled as she wheeled around. She gasped as she saw the floor coming up to meet her.
Incredibly he moved forward and caught her by the shoulders. He pulled her around and looked into her pale, drawn face. Then without a word, he slid his arms around her and stood holding her, gently, without passion.
“How did you manage that?” he asked, as if he thought she’d done it deliberately.
She hadn’t. She was always tripping over her own feet these days. Tears stung her eyes as she stood rigidly in his hold, her heart breaking. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, how it had been.
“I didn’t manage it,” she whispered in a raw tone. “I tripped, and not because I couldn’t wait to get your arms around me! I don’t need anything from you!”
Her tone made him bristle with bad temper. “Not even my love?” he asked mockingly, at her ear. “You begged for it, once,” he reminded her coldly.
She shivered. The memory, like most others of the past two years, wasn’t that pleasant. She started to step back but his big hands flattened on her shoulder blades and held her against him. She was aware, too aware, of the clean scent of his whipcord lean body, of the rough sigh of his breath, the movement of his broad chest so close that the tips of her breasts almost touched it. Ted, she thought achingly. Ted!
Her hands were clenched against his chest, to keep them honest. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together.
The hands on her back had become reluctantly caressing, and she felt his warm breath at the hair above her temple. He was so tall that she barely came up to his nose.
Under the warmth of his shirtfront, she could feel hard muscle and thick hair. He was offering her comfort, something she hadn’t had in two long years. But he was like Barry, a strong, domineering man, and she was no longer the young woman who’d worshiped him. She knew what men were under their civilized veneer, and now she couldn’t stand this close to a man without feeling threatened and afraid; Barry had made sure of it. She made a choked, involuntary sound as she felt Ted’s hands contract around her upper arms. He was bruising her without even realizing it. Or did he realize it? Was he thinking of ways to punish her, ways that Barry hadn’t gotten to?
Ted heard the pitiful sound she made. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned, and suddenly wrapped her up tight so that she was standing completely against him from head to toe. His tall body seemed to ripple with pleasure as he felt her against it.
Coreen shuddered. Two years ago, it would have been heaven to stand this close to Ted. But now, there were only vague memories of Ted and bitter, violent ones of Barry. Physical contact made her afraid now.
The tears came, and she stood rigidly in Ted’s embrace and let them fall hotly to her cheeks as she gave in to the pain. The sobs shook her whole body. She cried for Barry, whom she never loved. She cried for herself, because Ted held her in contempt, and even if he hadn’t, Barry had destroyed her as a woman. She wept until she was exhausted, drained.
Sandy stopped at the doorway, her eyes on Ted’s expression as he bent over Coreen’s dark head. Shocked, Sandy quickly made a noise to alert him to her presence, because she knew he wouldn’t want anyone to see the look on his face in that one brief, unguarded moment.
“Coffee!” she announced brightly, and without looking directly at him.
Ted released Coreen slowly, producing a handkerchief that he pressed angrily into her trembling hands. She wouldn’t look up at him. That registered, along with her rigid posture that hadn’t relaxed even when she cried in his arms, and the deep ache inside him that holding her had created.
“Sit down, Corrie, and have a buttered biscuit,” Sandy said as Ted moved quickly away and sat down again. “I found these wrapped up on the table.”
“Mrs. Masterson came early this morning and made breakfast,” Coreen recalled shakily. “I don’t think I ate any.”
“Tina said that she’s staying at a motel,” Ted remarked. He was furious at his own weakness. He hadn’t meant to let it go that far.
She wiped her eyes and looked at him then. “She and I don’t get along. She didn’t want to stay here,” she replied. “I did offer.”
He averted his eyes to the cup of black coffee that Sandy handed him.
“You should take a few days to rest,” Sandy told her friend. “Go down to the Caribbean or somewhere and get away from here.”
“Why not?” Ted drawled, staring coldly at the widow. “You can afford it.”
“Stop,” Coreen said wildly, her eyes like saucers in her white face. “Stop it, can’t you?”
“Ted, please!” Sandy added.
The sound of a car coming up the driveway diverted him. He got up and went to the door, refusing to look at Coreen again. His loss of control had shaken him.
“I can’t stand this,” Coreen whispered frantically. “He does nothing but try to get at me!”
“Barry said something to him,” Sandy revealed curtly. “I don’t know what. He mentioned at the cemetery that he’d seen him quite often and that Barry had told him things about you.”
“Knowing Barry, he invented some of them to make himself look even more pitiful,” Coreen said softly. “I was his scapegoat, his excuse for every terrible thing he did. He drank because of me, didn’t you know?”
“He drank because he wanted to,” Sandy corrected.
“You’re the only person in Jacobsville who believes that,” her friend said. She sipped her coffee, aware of voices in the hall, one deep and gentle, the other sharp and impatient.
“I thought that lawyer would be here by now,” Tina Tarleton said irritably, stripping off her white gloves as she joined the women. She was resplendent in a black suit by Chanel and had on only the finest accessories to match.
“I imagine he had to go by his office and get the paperwork first,” Coreen said.
Tina glared at her. “No doubt he’ll be here soon. I’d start packing if I were you.”
“I already have,” Coreen said. “It didn’t take long,” she added enigmatically.
Another car came up. Sandy went to the hall window. “The lawyer,” she announced, and went to open the door.
“Finally,” Tina snapped. “It’s about time!”
Coreen didn’t reply. She was staring at the chair where Barry used to sit, remembering. Her eyes were suddenly haunted, almost afraid.
Ted glared at her from his own chair. So she felt guilty, did she? And well she should. He hoped her conscience hurt her. He hoped she never had another minute’s peace.
She felt his glare and looked at him. His hands almost broke the arms of the chair he was occupying as he stared into her dead eyes with violence in his own.
The lawyer, a tall, graying gentleman, came into the room with Sandy and broke the spell. Coreen was ready to give thanks. She couldn’t really understand why Ted should hate her so much over the death of a cousin he wasn’t really that close to. But, then, he’d always hated her. Or at least, he’d given the appearance of hating her. He’d been hostile since that first time, two years ago, when he’d found himself forced into her company....
