She didn't weep. The tears were frozen in her throat, and she refused to let them melt. She ran across the fields, seeing nothing now, nothing but the haze of what had been. Or what had nearly been. All innocence had been shattered now. All illusions crushed to dust. Her life was lies. Conceived on them, bred on them, nurtured with them.
By the time she reached the house, her breath was sobbing in her lungs. She stopped herself, fisting her hands hard until her nails dug into flesh.
The birds still sang, and the tender young flowers she'd planted herself continued to dance in the breeze. But they no longer touched her. She saw herself as she'd been, shocked and appalled as she'd felt Rory's hand strike her to the ground. All these years later she could visualize it perfectly, the bafflement she'd felt as she'd stared up at him, the rage and disgust in his face before he'd turned and left her there.
She'd been marked as a whore, had she? By her own mother. By the man she had loved. What a fine joke it was, when she had never felt the weight of a man.
Very quietly she opened the door, closed it behind her.
So her fate had been decided for her on that long-ago morning. Well, now, this very day, she would take her fate into her own hands.
Deliberately she walked up the stairs, opened Gray's door. Closed it tight at her back. "Grayson?"
"Huh?"
"Do you want me?"
"Sure. Later." His head came up, his glazed eyes only half focused. "What? What did you say?"
"Do you want me?" she repeated. Her spine was as stiff as the question. "You've said you did, and acted as you did."
"I..." He made a manful attempt to pull himself out of imagination into reality. She was pale as ice, he noted, and her eyes glittered with cold
. And, he noted, hurt. "Brianna, what's going on?"
"A simple question. I'd thank you for an answer to it."
"Of course I want you. What's the-what in hell are you doing?" He was out of the chair like a shot, gaping as she began to briskly unbutton her blouse. "Cut it out. Goddamn it, stop that now."
"You said you want me. I'm obliging you."
"I said stop." In three strides he was to her, yanking her blouse together. "What's gotten into you? What's happened?"
"That's neither here nor there." She could feel herself beginning to shake and fought it back. "You've been trying to persuade me into bed, now I'm ready to go. If you can't spare the time now, just say so." Her eyes flared. "I'm used to being put off."
"It's not a matter of time-"
"Well, then." She broke away to turn down the bed. "Would you prefer the curtains open or closed? I've no preference."
"Leave the stupid curtains." The neat way she folded down the covers did what it always did. It made his stomach tighten into a slippery fist of lust. "We're not going to do this."
"You don't want me, then." When she straightened her open blouse shifted, giving him a tantalizing peek of pale skin and tidy white cotton.
"You're killing me," he murmured.
"Fine. I'll leave you to die in peace." Head high, she marched for the door. He merely slammed a hand on it to keep it shut.
"You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on."
"Nothing, it seems, at least with you." She pressed herself back against the door, forgetting now to breathe slowly, evenly, to keep the wrenching pain out of her voice. "Surely there's a man somewhere who might spare a moment or two to give me a tumble."
He bared his teeth. "You're pissing me off."
"Oh, well, that's a pity. I do beg your pardon. It's sorry I am to have bothered you. It's only that I thought you'd meant what you'd said. That's my problem, you see," she murmured as tears glistened in her eyes. "Always believing."
He would have to handle the tears, he realized, and whatever emotional tailspin she was caught in, without touching her. "What happened?"
"I found out." Her eyes weren't cold now, but devastated and desperate. "I found out that there's never been a man who's loved me. Not really loved me ever. And that my own mother lied, lied hatefully, to take away even that small chance of happiness. She told him I'd slept with Murphy. She told him that, and that I might be carrying a child. How could he marry me believing that? How could be believe it loving me?"
"Hold on a minute." He paused, waiting for her quick blur of words to register. "You're saying that your mother told the guy you were going to marry, this Rory, that you'd been having sex with Murphy, might be pregnant?"
"She told him that so that I couldn't escape this house." Leaning her head back she closed her eyes. "This house as it was then. And he believed her. He believed I could have done that, believed it so that he never asked me if it was true. Only told me he wouldn't have me, and left. And all this time Maggie and Murphy have known it, and kept it from me."
Tread carefully, Gray warned himself. Emotional quicksand. "Look, I'm on the outside here, and I'd say, being a professional observer, that your sister and Murphy kept their mouths shut to keep you from hurting more than you already were."
"It was my life, wasn't it? Do you know what it's like not to know why you're not wanted, to go through life only knowing you weren't, but never why?"
Yeah, he knew, exactly. But he didn't think it was the answer she wanted. "He didn't deserve you. That should give you some satisfaction."
"It doesn't. Not now. I thought you would show me." He stepped cautiously back as the breath clogged in his lungs. A beautiful woman, one who had, from the first instant, stirred his blood. Innocent. Offering. "You're upset," he managed in a tight voice. "Not thinking clearly. And as much as it pains me, there are rules." "I don't want excuses."
"You want a substitute." The quick violence of the statement surprised both of them. He hadn't realized that little germ had been in his head. But he lashed out as it grew. "I'm not a goddamn stand-in for some whiny, wimp-hearted jerk who tossed you over a decade ago. Yesterday sucks. Well, welcome to reality. When I take a woman to bed, she's going to be thinking about me. Just me."
What little color that had seeped back into her cheeks drained. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way, didn't mean it to seem that way."
"That's exactly how it seems, because that's exactly what it is. Pull yourself together," he ordered, deadly afraid she would start to cry again. "When you figure out what you want, let me know."
"I only... I needed to feel as if something, you, wanted me. I thought-I hoped I'd have something to remember. Just once, to know what it was like to be touched by a man I cared for." The color came back, humiliation riding her cheeks as Gray stared at her. "Doesn't matter. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry."
She yanked open the door and fled.
She was sorry, Gray thought, staring into the space where she'd been. He