The Protectors. Beverly Barton

cola on the concrete table. “Why should I be afraid of you? You’re here to protect me, aren’t you?”

      “I wasn’t asking if you were afraid that I might physically harm you. We both know that’s ridiculous. I’m asking why your hands tremble whenever you think I might touch you. And why you have a difficult time looking directly at me. Your eyes give you away, honey.”

      She undid the plastic covering her meatball sandwich. “I feel awkward around you, Ashe. I guess I’m just not as sophisticated as the women you’re accustomed to these days. Maybe what happened between us in the past didn’t affect your life the way it did mine.”

      No, Ashe didn’t suppose what had happened between them had affected his life the way it had hers. She had gone on as if nothing had happened, secure in her family’s love and support and Wallace Vaughn’s money. Maybe she’d suffered a broken heart for a while until she’d found another boyfriend. But he had paid a high price for their night of passion. He had lost his dream. His big plans of becoming one of the area’s movers and shakers had turned sour.

      “You don’t look like you’ve fared too badly.” Ashe surveyed her from the top of her golden blond hair, all neatly secured in a fashionable bun at the nape of her neck, to the length of shapely legs partially hidden beneath the picnic table. “You’re successful, beautiful and rich.”

      Did he actually have no idea what he’d done to her? Of course he didn’t know about the child they had created together, but how could he have forgotten his adamant rejection, his cruel words of regret, his deliberate avoidance of her in the days and weeks following their lovemaking?

      “Whenever we’re together, I can’t seem to stop thinking about…I suppose it’s true what they say about a woman never forgetting her first lover.”

      Her words hit him like a hard blow to the stomach. He sucked in air. Why did she sound so innocent, so vulnerable? After all this time, why did the memories of that night haunt him? Why did the thought of a young girl’s passionate cries still echo in his mind? “And a guy never forgets what its like to take a virgin, to be her first. I never meant for it to happen. One minute you were comforting me and the next minute—”

      “You don’t have to tell me again that you wished it hadn’t happened, that you regretted making love to me the minute it was over. You made that perfectly clear eleven years ago! Do you think I don’t know that you were pretending I was Whitney all the while you were…”

      Deborah lifted her legs, swung them around and off the concrete bench and jumped up, turning her back to Ashe. The quivering inside her stomach escalated so quickly it turned to nausea.

      Dammit! Is that what she actually thought? That he had pretended she was Whitney? Yes, he’d thought he was in love with Whitney, but the minute she announced her engagement to George Jamison III, there at the country club where he worked, he’d begun to doubt his love. And when she had laughed in his face and told him he’d been a fool to think she’d ever marry a loser like him, all the love inside him had died. Murdered by her cruelty.

      Ashe got up and walked over to Deborah. He wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her and draw her close. She stood there, her shoulders trembling, her neck arched, her head tilted upward. Was she crying? He couldn’t bear it if she was crying.

      “Deborah?”

      She couldn’t speak; unshed tears clogged her throat. Shaking her head, she waved her hands at her sides, telling him to leave her alone.

      “I did not pretend you were Whitney.” He reached out to touch her, but didn’t. He dropped his hand to his side. “I might’ve had a few drinks to dull the pain that night, but I knew who you were and I knew what I was doing.”

      “You were—” she gasped for air “—using me.”

      How could he deny the truth? He had used her. Used her to forget another woman’s heartless rejection. Used her to salve his bruised male ego. Used her because she’d been there at his side, offering her comfort, her love, her adoration.

      “Yeah, you’re right. I used you. And that’s what I regretted. I regretted taking advantage of you, of stealing your innocence. But I didn’t regret the loving.”

      The unshed tears nearly choked her. The pain of remembrance clutched her heart. He didn’t regret the loving? Was that what he’d just said?

      He grabbed her shoulders in a gentle but firm hold. She tensed, every nerve in her body coming to full alert. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her, yet couldn’t bring herself to pull away.

      “I told you I was sorry for what happened, that I regretted what I’d done.” Ashe couldn’t see Deborah’s face; she kept her back to him. But in his mind’s eye he could see plainly her face eleven years ago. There in the moonlight by the river, her face aglow with the discovery of sexual pleasure and girlish love, she had crumpled before his very eyes when he’d begged her to forgive him, told her that what happened had been a mistake. She had cried, but when he’d tried to comfort her, she had lashed out at him like a wildcat. He’d found himself wanting her all over again, and hating himself for his feelings.

      “I’ve never felt so worthless in my life as I did that night.” Deborah balled her hands into fists. She wanted to hit Ashe, to vent all the old bitterness and frustration. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that he’d left her pregnant and she hated him for not caring, for never being concerned about her welfare or the child he had given her.

      He turned her around slowly, the stiffness in her body unyielding. She faced him, her chin lifted high, her eyes bright and glazed with a fine sheen of moisture.

      “When I took you, I knew it was you. Do you understand? I wanted you. Not Whitney. Not any other woman.”

      “But you said…you said—”

      “I said it shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have. I didn’t love you, not like I should have. I couldn’t offer you marriage. What I did was wrong.”

      She quivered from head to toe, clinching her jaws tightly, trying desperately not to cry. She glared at him, her blue eyes accusing him.

      Dear God, he had hurt her more than he’d ever known. After all these years, she hadn’t let go of the pain. Was that why she’d gone to her father? Is that why she’d accused him of raping her? Or had she accused him? Was it possible that the rape charges had been Wallace’s idea? The thought had crossed his mind more than once in the past eleven years.

      “Neither of us can change the past,” he said. “We can’t go back and make things right. But I want you to know how it really was with me. With us.”

      “It doesn’t matter. Not any more.” She tried to pull away from him; he held her tight.

      “Yes, it does matter. It matters to me and it matters to you.”

      “I wish Mother had never brought you back.” Deborah closed her eyes against the sight of Ashe McLaughlin, his big hands clasping her possessively.

      “She’s doomed us both to hell, hasn’t she?” Ashe jerked Deborah into his arms, crushing her against him. “I would have made love to you a second time that night and a third and fourth. I wanted you that much. Do you understand? I never wanted anything as much as I wanted you that night. Not Whitney. Not my college degree. Not being successful enough to thumb my nose at Sheffield’s elite.”

      Her breathing quickened. Her heart raced wildly. She wanted to run. She wanted to throw her arms around Ashe. She wanted to plead with him to stop saying such outrageous things. She wanted him to go on telling her how much he’d wanted her, to tell her over and over again.

      “Why…why didn’t you tell me? That night? All you kept saying was that you were sorry.” Deborah leaned into him, unable to resist the magnetic pull of his big body.

      “You wanted me to tell you I loved you. I couldn’t lie to you, Deborah. I’d just learned that night that I didn’t know a damned thing about love.”