Part of the Bargain. Linda Miller Lael

innocence of an altar boy’s. “If I’m insane, darlin’, it’s something you could cure.”

      Libby resisted an urge to slap him again. She wanted to race into the house, but he was still barring her way, so that she could not leave the dock without brushing against him. “Stay away from me, Stacey,” she said as he advanced toward her. “I mean it—stay away from me!”

      “I can’t, Libby.”

      The sincerity in his voice was chilling; for the first time in all the years she’d known Stacey Barlowe, Libby was afraid of him. Discretion kept her from screaming, but just barely.

      Stacey paled, as though he’d read her thoughts. “Don’t look at me like that, Libby— I wouldn’t hurt you under any circumstances. And I’m not crazy.”

      She lifted her chin. “Let me by, Stacey. I want to go into the house.”

      He tilted his head back, sighed, met her eyes again. “I’ve frightened you, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

      Libby couldn’t speak. Despite his rational, settling words, she was sick with the knowledge that he meant to pursue her.

      “You must know,” he said softly, “how good it could be for us. You needed me in New York, Libby, and now I need you.”

      The third voice, from the base of the hillside, was to Libby as a life preserver to a drowning person. “Let her pass, Stacey.”

      Libby looked up quickly to see Jess, unlikely rescuer that he was. His hair was towel-rumpled and his jeans clung to muscular thighs—thighs that only minutes ago had pressed against her own in a demand as old as time. His manner was calm as he buttoned a shirt, probably borrowed from Ken, over his broad chest.

      Stacey shrugged affably and walked past his brother without a word of argument.

      Watching him go, Libby went weak with relief. A lump rose in her throat as she forced herself to meet Jess’s gaze. “You were right,” she muttered miserably. “You were right.”

      Jess was watching her much the way a mountain cat would watch a cornered rabbit. For the briefest moment there was a look of tenderness in the green eyes, but then his expression turned hard and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “I trust the welcome-home party has been scheduled for later—after Cathy has been tucked into her bed, for instance?”

      Libby gaped at him, appalled. Had he interceded only to torment her himself?

      Jess’s eyes were contemptuous as they swept over her. “What’s the matter, Lib? Couldn’t you bring yourself to tell your married lover that the welcoming had already been taken care of?”

      Rage went through Libby’s body like an electric current surging into a wire. “You don’t seriously think that I would… That I was—”

      “You even managed to be alone with him. Tell me, Lib—how did you get rid of my father?”

      “G-get rid…” Libby stopped, tears of shock and mortification aching in her throat and burning behind her eyes. She drew a deep, audible breath, trying to assemble herself, to think clearly.

      But the whole world seemed to be tilting and swirling like some out-of-control carnival ride. When Libby closed her eyes against the sensation, she swayed dangerously and would probably have fallen if Jess hadn’t reached her in a few strides and caught her shoulders in his hands.

      “Libby…” he said, and there was anger in the sound, but there was a hollow quality, too—one that Libby couldn’t find a name for.

      Her knees were trembling. Too much, it was all too much. Jonathan’s death, the ugly divorce, the trouble that Stacey had caused with his misplaced affections—all of those things weighed on her, but none were so crushing as the blatant contempt of this man. It was apparent to Libby now that the lovemaking they had almost shared, so new and beautiful to her, had been some sort of cruel joke to Jess.

      “How could you?” she choked out. “Oh, Jess, how could you?”

      His face was grim, seeming to float in a shimmering mist. Instead of answering, Jess lifted Libby into his arms and carried her up the little hill toward the house.

      She didn’t remember reaching the back door.

      “What the devil happened on that dock today, Jess?” Cleave Barlowe demanded, hands grasping the edge of his desk.

      His younger son stood at the mahogany bar, his shoulders stiff, his attention carefully fixed on the glass of straight Scotch he meant to consume. “Why don’t you ask Stacey?”

      “Goddammit, I’m asking you!” barked Cleave. “Ken’s mad as hell, and I don’t blame him—that girl of his was shattered!”

      Girl. The word caught in Jess’s beleaguered mind. He remembered the way Libby had responded to him, meeting his passion with her own, welcoming the greed he’d shown at her breasts. Had it not been for the arrival of his father and brother, he would have possessed her completely within minutes. “She’s no ‘girl,’” he said, still aching to bury himself in the depths of her.

      The senator swore roundly. “What did you say to her, Jess?” he pressed, once the spate of unpoliticianly profanity had passed.

      Jess lowered his head. He’d meant the things he’d said to Libby, and he couldn’t, in all honesty, have taken them back. But he knew some of what she’d been through in New York, her trysts with Stacey notwithstanding, and he was ashamed of the way he’d goaded her. She had come home to heal—the look in her eyes had told him that much—and instead of respecting that, he had made things more difficult for her.

      Never one to be thwarted by silence, no matter how eloquent, Senator Barlowe persisted. “Dammit, Jess, I might expect this kind of thing from Stacey, but I thought you had more sense! You were harassing Libby about these blasted rumors your brother has been spreading, weren’t you?”

      Jess sighed, set aside the drink he had yet to take a sip from, and faced his angry father. “Yes,” he said.

      “Why?”

      Stubbornly, Jess refused to answer. He took an interest in the imposing oak desk where his father sat, the heavy draperies that kept out the sun, the carved ivory of the fireplace.

      “All right, mulehead,” Cleave muttered furiously, “don’t talk! Don’t explain! And don’t go near Ken Kincaid’s daughter again, damn you. That man’s the best foreman I’ve ever had and if he gets riled and quits because of you, Jess, you and I are going to come to time!”

      Jess almost smiled, though he didn’t quite dare. Not too many years before the phrase “come to time,” when used by his father, had presaged a session in the woodshed. He wondered what it meant now that he was thirty-three years old, a member of the Montana State Bar Association, and a full partner in the family corporation. “I care about Cathy,” he said evenly. “What was I supposed to do—stand by and watch Libby and Stace grind her up into emotional hamburger?”

      Cleave gave a heavy sigh and sank into the richly upholstered swivel chair behind his desk. “I love Cathy, too,” he said at length, “but Stacey’s behind this whole mess, not Libby. Dammit, that woman has been through hell from what Ken says—she was married to a man who slept in every bed but his own, and she had to watch her nine-year-old stepson die by inches. Now she comes home looking for a little peace, and what does she get? Trouble!”

      Jess lowered his head, turned away—ostensibly to take up his glass of Scotch. He’d known about the bad marriage— Ken had cussed the day Aaron Strand was born often enough—but he hadn’t heard about the little boy. My God, he hadn’t known about the boy.

      “Maybe Strand couldn’t sleep in his own bed,” he said, urged on by some ugliness that had surfaced inside him since Libby’s return. “Maybe Stacey was already in it.”

      “Enough!” boomed the senator in a voice that had made presidents tremble in their shoes.