He stood too close to her, just inside the door, staring down at her with narrowed dark eyes. She moved away to give herself breathing space. He was physically too imposing, ten inches taller and with that lean, hard athlete’s body.
She would have to go on tiptoe to kiss even the hollow of his tanned, muscular throat. The aberrant thought shocked her, shook her, and instinctively she guarded her expression. She could never let him know that she was even remotely attracted to him; it would give him a weapon of devastating power to use against her.
"This is a surprise," she said lightly, though it wasn’t. "Have a seat. Would you like a cup of coflee, or maybe iced
tea?"
"Skip the pleasantries," he said, moving toward her, and she heard the cold anger in his smoky voice. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here," she replied, arching her brows in mock surprise. She hadn’t expected the confrontation to come quite so soon; he was more efficient than she had expected. She moved away from him again, desperate to keep a safe distance between them. His gaze sharpened, then gleamed with satisfaction, and with a chill she knew he had realized that his closeness made her nervous. She halted, determined not to let him know that he could intimidate her that way, and turned to squarely face him. She lifted her chin, the expression in her green eyes cool and unruffled. It took a lot of effort, but she managed it.
"You won’t for long. You’ve wasted your time and effort in coming back."
With gentle amusement she said, "Even you could have problems throwing me out of my own house."
His gaze sharpened as he glanced around the neat, cozy living room. "I bought it," she enlarged. "It isn’t financed, it’s mine free and clear."
He gave a harsh crack of laughter, startling her. "You must have divorced Mr. Hardy and taken him to the cleaners. Did you get everything he had?"
Faith stiffened. "As a matter of fact, I did. But I didn’t divorce him."
"What did you do, snare yourself an old geezer who kicked off after a year or two? Did he have heirs you gypped out of their inheritance?"
Color fled her cheeks, leaving her as pale as a statue. "No,
I snared myself a healthy young man of twenty-three, who died in a car accident before we’d been married a year."
His mouth tightened. "I’m sorry," he said gruffly. "I shouldn’t have said that."
"No, you shouldn’t have, but I’ve never noticed that concern for other’s feelings has ever worried a Rouillard."
He gave a snort of derision. "A Devlin should be careful about throwing rocks in that particular glass house."
"I’ve never harmed anyone," she said with a bitter little smile. "I just got caught between the lines when the battle started."
"All innocence, hmmm? You were pretty young when all that happened, but I have a real good memory, and you were sashaying around in front of me and all those deputies, wearing your little thin nightgown that we could see through. Like mother, like daughter, I’d say."
Faith’s eyes widened, full of outrage and horrified embarrassment, and color flooded back into her face. She took two quick steps forward and jabbed him in the chest with her forefinger. "Don’t you
dare
throw that in my face!" she said, choking with rage. "I was dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night, and tossed into the yard like a piece of trash. Don’t say it," she warned sharply, when he opened his mouth to retort that trash was exactly what she’d been, and jabbed him in the chest again. "Everything we owned was dumped out, my little brother was hysterical and wouldn’t turn loose of me. What was I supposed to do, take time out to find some of my own clothes and retire into the woods to change? Why didn’t you so-called
decent
men turn your backs, if you were seeing a little too much?"
He looked down into her furious face, his expression strangely arrested, then his eyes became more heavy-lidded and intent. He took hold of her hand, moving it away from his chest. He didn’t release her, but kept her fingers folded against his hard, calloused palm. "You’ve got a little redheaded temper there, haven’t you?" he asked with amusement.
His touch shocked her with a hot twinge of electricity. She tried to jerk her hand free, but he merely tightened his grip,
effortlessly restraining her. "Now, don’t get all in a pucker," he said lazily. "Maybe you thought I’d stand here and let you poke holes in me with your fingernail, but I have to be in a different mood to enjoy that."
Faith glared up at him. She could humiliate herself by giving in to the useless urge to struggle, or she could wait until he decided to release her. Her instincts were to struggle away from the disturbing heat of his touch, the surprising roughness of his palm, but she forced herself to stand still, sensing that he would enjoy watching her try to free herself. Then the sensual undertone of his comment registered, and her eyes widened as shock rippled through her. There was no mistaking his meaning this time.
"Smart girl," he said, his gaze sliding down to her breasts. He took his time, examining the shape of them beneath her silk, mint green shirt. She caught her breath, his gaze like an actual touch that made her breasts tingle. "You don’t want to start a tussle with me that you can’t win – or do you? Your mama probably taught you that a man gets hard real quick when a woman starts wiggling against him. Did you come back thinking you might step into your mother’s shoes? Do you want to be my whore, the way she was my dad’s?"
Swift fury glittered in her eyes, and she swung her free hand with all her strength. Quick as a rattlesnake his other hand lashed out, blocking the blow and capturing that hand, too. He gave a low whistle at the force she had put into the swing. "Temper, temper," he chided, looking as if he were enjoying her anger. "Were you trying to knock my teeth out?"
"Yes!" she flared, gritting her teeth together and forgetting her determination to deny him the pleasure of a struggle. She jerked her hands, trying to twist free, and succeeded only in bruising her wrists. "Get out! Get out of my house."
He laughed down at her, easily reducing her to a standstill as he brought her hard against him. "What are you going to do, throw me out?"
She froze, alarmed to find that his reaction to a struggle was exactly what he’d said it would be. There was no mistaking the ridge pressed against her belly. She struck out
with the only weapon left to her, her tongue. "If you’ll let
go
of me, you Neanderthal, what I’ll do is put ice on my wrists to stop them from turning black and blue!" she hotly retorted.
He looked down at his long fingers encircling her slender wrists, loosening his grip and scowling at the dark red marks that quickly formed. "I didn’t mean to hurt you," he said, surprising her. He immediately released her. "You have skin like a baby."
She drew back, massaging her wrists and steadfastly refusing to look at the front of his trousers. That, too, could be ignored. "My guess is you didn’t care if you hurt me. Now, get out."
"In a minute. I have a few things to say." • She gave him a cold look. "Then for God’s sake, say them and leave."
Danger glittered in those dark eyes, and before she knew it, he was right in front of her again, almost playfully pinching her chin. "You’re a ballsy little babe, aren’t you? Maybe too ballsy for your own good. Don’t take me on in a fight, sweet thing, because you’ll get hurt. The best thing you can do is pack up your stuff and get out of here, just as fast as you moved in; I’ll buy the house from you, for what you gave for it, so you won’t be out anything. You aren’t welcome here, and I don’t want my mother and sister hurt by seeing you parading around as if nothing ever happened, bringing up that old scandal again and getting everybody upset. If you stay, if you force my hand, I can make things rough for you here, and you’ll wind up getting hurt. You won’t be able to get a job, and you’ll find out damn fast that you don’t have any friends here."
She jerked her chin away from him. "What will you do, burn me out?" she goaded. "I’m not a helpless fourteen-year-old anymore, and you’ll find that it isn’t as easy to bully me now. I’m here, and I’m staying."
"We’ll see about that, won’t we?" His hooded gaze dropped to her breasts again, and suddenly he grinned. "You’re right about one thing: You’re not fourteen anymore."
He walked out then, leaving Faith staring after him, her
fists clenched with impotent anger, and panic clenching her stomach. She didn’t want him to notice her as a woman, didn’t want him to turn that hot, hooded gaze on her, because she wasn’t certain of her ability to resist him. She felt sick at the thought of being like her mother, of being what he had taunted her with being, a whore for a Rouillard.
"Was it Renee?" Monica asked quietly, though she was drawn so tight that the tension was almost visible. She had called Gray from Morgan’s grocery store, more upset than he had heard her in years, since the day he’d had to tell her that their father had left them for Renee Devlin, in fact. Monica had come a long way since then, but the haunted look in her eyes told Gray that the pain was still too close to the surface for her to be objective about it.
"No, but it was definitely a Devlin." He poured himself a finger of Scotch and tossed it back, then poured another finger, feeling that he needed it after another encounter with Faith Devlin. Faith Devlin
Hardy,
that is. A widow. A young, lovely, red-haired widow with so much fire in her that he’d wanted to check his hands for singe marks after touching her. He had disconcerted her a couple of times, but for the most part she exhibited a maddeningly cool confidence. She hadn’t been the least bit worried by his threats, though she had to know he wasn’t bluffing.
They were in the study, enjoying a before-dinner drink, at least Gray was. Alex was coming to dinner, and Noelle would be down soon, so Gray and Monica had gone into the study to have a few minutes of privacy for their discussion.
Monica looked blank. "It wasn’t Renee? It looked just like her, as if she hadn’t aged at all. She even looked younger. Oh – I see." Comprehension dawned. "It was one of the girls, wasn’t it?"
"The youngest one. Faith. She always looked more like Renee than any of the others."
"What’s she doing here?"
"She says she’s come back to stay."
Horror filled Monica’s dark eyes. "She can’t! Mother couldn’t bear it! Alex has gotten her to come out of her shell a little, but if she hears any of the Devlins are back in town,
there’s no telling how far it will set her back. You’ll have to get rid of her again, Gray."
Wryly he considered his Scotch, and finished it with one gulp. The whole town knew the story about him running the Devlin family out of the parish. It wasn’t something he was particularly proud of, but neither did he regret it, and the incident had become enshrined as a sort of local legend. Monica hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the ugliness; she knew only the results, not the process. She didn’t have the memory seared into her brain. It was always with him: Faith’s terror, the little boy’s hysterical shrieks and pitiful attempts to cling to her, her desperate struggle to gather up their belongings… and the potent, uncomfortable lust with which the men had watched her, the night shadows Concealing her youth and revealing only her resemblance to her mother.
With a sharp little pang he realized that that night was a link between them, him and Faith, a bond forged by a common memory that couldn’t be broken short of death. He had never really known her, and twelve years lay between then and now, and yet… he hadn’t thought of her or treated her as a stranger. It was as if they had resumed an acquaintance of long standing. They weren’t strangers; there was that night between them.
"Getting rid of her may be harder this time," he said abruptly. "She’s bought the Cleburne place, and as she pointed out to me, I can’t kick her off her own property."
"If she’s buying it, there has to be some way to interfere with the mortgage – "
"I didn’t say she’s buying it, I said she’s bought it. There’s a difference."
Monica frowned. "Where would a Devlin get that kind of money?"
"Probably life insurance. She’s a widow. Her last name is Hardy now."
"How convenient for her," Monica said sarcastically.
"No, from what I gather, it wasn’t," Gray said, seeing in his mind how pale Faith had gone when he had said much the same thing. He heard the doorbell ring, and Alex’s voice as Oriane opened the door to him. Discussion time was
over. He patted Monica’s shoulder as they moved to the door. "I’ll do what I can to make her leave, but it isn’t a foregone conclusion. She isn’t a typical Devlin."
No, not typical in any way. Even when she’d been a teenager, looking at her had been enough to get him hard. That hadn’t changed. But she was also a more capable opponent than any of the rest of her family ever could have been. She was poised and intelligent, and seemed to have pulled herself, by whatever means, out of the gutters where her family had always lived. He respected her for that, but it didn’t make any difference; she had to go. Monica was worried about what her presence would do to Noelle, but he was worried about what it would do to Monica as well.
They went out into the foyer as Noelle came gracefully down the stairs to greet Alex, offering her cheek for his kiss, allowing him to tuck her hand into the crook of his arm, small touches that she had seldom allowed her husband. Alex’s devotion had been good for Noelle, soothing a bit the pain of her shattered self-confidence, but Gray wasn’t so sure it had been good for Alex. His wife had died fifteen years before and he should have remarried; he’d been only forty-one at the time of her death. Perhaps he would have, in time, but then Guy had left, and Alex, good friend that he was, had devoted himself to helping the Rouillards through the crisis. Even after receiving the letter of proxy, it had taken Gray a good two years to consolidate his position, and Alex had been right there, sitting up through all-night strategy sessions, becoming a sort of surrogate father to Monica, gradually cajoling Noelle out of her total depression. He had fallen painfully in love with Noelle, a fact to which she seemed oblivious.