Free Desperado by Diana Palmer Page A

and didn’t want him to find out and contact Cord, because it was a minor one. She’d lied her head off, then and now. She was tired of lies, but afraid to let Cord know the truth. It would serve no purpose now, except to hurt him. She couldn’t do that.
    “He was afraid of you,” she recalled quietly. “I think that was why he ran.”
    He moved close to her, staring down into her eyes intently. “Keep going,” he coaxed when she stopped.
    She shrugged. “He got in his car and took off as soon as the ambulance picked me up. He was drinking heavily. He ran his car into a telephone pole doing ninety. It was instantly fatal.”
    “And no great loss,” he replied tersely. “All this time, and you never said a word!”
    “The past is the past, Cord,” she told him, her eyes searching over his face like loving hands. “You’ve had tragedies enough of your own, without adding my problems to them. I’m an adult. I have to be responsible for myself.”
    His face clenched. “Is that what you think? That I’m too wrapped up in myself to care what happens to you?”
    “I’m just a stray kid that Amy Barton picked up,” she replied. “No relation to you. None at all.”
    That hurt. It really hurt. He was picturing Maggie being beaten to her knees, badly enough to send her to the hospital, by a drunken man, and no one to protect her. He hated the thought of Bart Evans. He wanted, so badly, to go back in time and be less selfish. If he’d stayed in Houston, instead of running off to lick his wounds, Maggie could have been spared that anguish. He’d failed her. And it wasn’t the first time.
    “He’d never have touched you if I’d been in town,” he said coldly.
    She lowered her eyes to her lap. If he’d been in town, and learned the truth, he’d have killed Bart Evans. It was better that he never knew.
    “It cured me of wanting to get married, at least,” she said whimsically.
    “What a waste,” he said without thinking.
    She looked up, surprised.
    He wasn’t smiling. He looked sad. “What a hell of a life you’ve had,” he murmured. “And I have a feeling that I don’t know the half of it.”
    Her flush of color told him that he’d guessed accurately. He wondered just how many terrible secrets she was keeping.
    “You don’t trust me with secrets, do you?” he asked, frowning.
    She closed up. “You have enough of your own. I don’t share mine.” She stood up. “I want my cherry pie.”
    He caught her by the waist as she started past him. “Not yet. Evans must have had a reason for hitting you, no matter how drunk he was. What was it?”
    Her heart ran away. She could still picture his furious face when he realized that Cord was responsible for her condition. He was outraged, infuriated, ready to kill her.
    Her eyes were shadowed, full of pain. Bart had told her what he was going to do to her, and that she’d never disgrace him. He was going to eliminate this problem! And he’d hit her, and hit her, finally knocking her violently down over the stair railing and into a marble table. She’d fought back, for all thegood it did her. But when she hit the table, breaking it, and felt the agonizing, twisting pain in her belly, she knew what he’d done. She’d screamed at him, threatened him with what was going to happen when Cord knew. He wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t remember who Cord was, and what he did for a living. He’d managed to dial the emergency number and waited only until a weeping, moaning Maggie was carried off to the hospital until he’d packed a bag and gotten into his luxury car for a rushed trip out of town. It had ended in his own death. Maggie had her own grief to face.
    “You look as if the memories are killing you,” Cord remarked, bringing her back to the present. He drew her closer. “Talk to me. Tell me.”
    Her sad eyes met his and she shook her head. “It’s all over.”
    His thumbs moved lazily against her rib cage while he watched her reaction to his