THE MORNING SIDE OF DAWN Read online

  "You just can't accept that I like things the way they are, can you?"

  She stopped suddenly, a few feet away, and turned back to face him once more.

  "Oh, yes, I can. I know you like it. What's not to like? You don't have to take any chances. Oh, sure, you'll risk breaking your neck on some crazy downhill run, or God knows what other kind of injury, but that's just physical. You've been through worse, right?"

  Dar shifted uncomfortably; he didn't like the turn this was taking. "Look, just drop it, will you? We'll forget about the damned tape, and—"

  "That's it, isn't it? You can't even talk about it." She shook her head slowly as she stared at him. "How many people have you rejected before they could reject you? Do you plan on staying alone forever, just because it's easier? Because it's safer?"

  "I plan," he said tightly, "on living my life as I damn well please."

  "Alone," she retorted. "Because having friends, or family, or loving someone means you have to risk something. Something more than your body. You have to risk yourself. Your emotions. Your heart. And you can't do that."

  "That's it." Dar slammed his can down on the counter. Beer sloshed out and ran over his hand; he ignored it. "I'm out of here."

  "Yeah, run away, Cordell. You may have all the guts in the world when it comes to physical pain, but you haven't got the courage of a marshmallow when it comes to anything else."

  "What the hell do you know about it?" His hand, still wet with the beer, slipped on the push rim, spoiling his planned quick exit.

  "I know that it's not 'us and them.' It's not the world you're fighting, Dar. It's yourself."

  He didn't answer her, because he didn't know what the answer was. And because somewhere deep inside him, he was very much afraid she was right. He wiped his hand on his shirt and wheeled away into his bedroom without a word.

  * * *

  Cassie pulled the blanket up closer around her, but knew nothing material could ward off the chill she was feeling, because it was inside her, someplace low and deep. The place that had leapt to fiery life the first time Dar had kissed her. The place that had continued to glow every time she looked at him. The place that had flared anew when he'd held her on his lap, and had blazed into a near inferno when they had kissed again, that long, searching kiss that she had initiated, but he had ended.

  But that place was cold now, and she'd doused the fire herself, because she hadn't been able to stop herself from feeling, and from letting it show. And that kind of genuine feeling was probably more guaranteed to drive Dar Cordell away than anything else.

  She drew her knees up further, as if curling up into the tightest ball she could would somehow warm her. Right now she doubted if she'd ever be really warm again. She'd been trying to sleep for hours, it seemed, but all she could do was think about what she'd said. She'd had no right to criticize him. No right to tell him how to run his life, or what was wrong with the way he was living it. He was right—she had no idea what he'd been through, or what it had been like. She'd been incredibly arrogant. She'd been more Cassandra than Cassie, and the realization made her more than a little ill.

  She would leave, first thing in the morning. It was the best thing she could do, and the only kind of apology she could think of that he might believe. She would thank him for his help, then leave him to his hard-won peace.

  She froze at the whisper of sound, the now-familiar swish of wheels across the floor. She knew she'd been lying awake for some time, but it was hours before dawn, and far too early even for the driven Dar to go out for his morning's training.

  Then the direction of the sound changed, and she realized he was coming toward the couch, toward her. She held her breath. Perhaps he was going to beat her to the punch and ask her to leave. She wouldn't blame him.

  "Cassie?"

  It was soft, barely audible, and wouldn't have awakened her if she had been asleep. She debated for an instant about whether to feign sleep, to avoid this confrontation, but it wasn't in her to do it. She lifted her head, peering at him but unable to see much in the dim light. She could only make out his shape, and the slight sheen of light on his bare shoulders.

  "I'm awake."

  "Me, too," he said, unnecessarily. She sensed him moving closer, until he was right next to the sofa. Then, in those same soft tones that seemed incongruous after the heatedness of their last conversation, he asked, "You're all curled up. Are you cold?"

  "Yes."

  "But it's not—"

  "Cold in here. I know." She hesitated, then took the plunge; if she didn't get it said now, she might not ever do it. "I was out of line tonight, Dar. I'm sorry."

  "No, Cassie—"

  "I'll leave in the morning. I think—"

  "I don't want you to leave."

  "You don't?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  There was a moment of silence, then she heard him take a very deep breath. Then silence for a long moment, as if he were steeling himself for something. She heard a metallic sound she knew she'd heard before but didn't immediately recognize, then heard the rustle of movement. He'd set the brakes on his chair, she realized. That's what that familiar sound had been.

  Then all thought—and her breath—halted as she realized he had left his chair and maneuvered himself onto the couch beside her. She knew she had stiffened in shock that he had left his chair, and she made herself loosen her tensed muscles. She could feel his heat, feel it radiating from his body, and thought that she just might be warm again after all. She untangled herself from the blanket and sat up, curling her legs up under her; she'd lain down in her jeans and sweatshirt, but her feet were bare.

  "I was wondering if you ever used this furniture for anything but an obstacle course," she quipped, trying to cover her reaction to his closeness, to the decision he'd made to risk this with her.

  "I use it sometimes," he said, still sounding oddly quiet. "When I'm really stiff after a workout, or after a race when I'm too tired to move much. But never … when someone is here."

  He was making her nervous, with this quiet talk and this unexpected openness, and it drove her to tease lightly. "That leaves you a lot of time to use it, then."

  "Yes."

  She'd been expecting a reaction, a groan, some comment about not returning to the argument they'd had, anything except that quiet acknowledgment. It took her a moment to recognize what he was doing for what it was: an apology. An apology he couldn't find words for.

  She didn't know what to say. And somehow she knew that this was not a time to fill the silence with just any inane thing that came to her, or to blurt out the first thing that popped into her head, that lamentable tendency she seemed to have developed around him. So she kept silent. It seemed easier to do in the darkness.

  After a moment she was rewarded. His words were halting, and very, very tentative, but they were coming, and she bit her lip in fear that they would stop.

  "I … I know I don't … deal with people very well. I've been … cut off for a long time. I don't … remember how to just … talk. If I ever knew."

  "Ever?" she asked softly when he didn't go on.

  He let out a long, sighing breath. "I don't… My dad was never much of a talker. Except when he was telling you what he expected of you. I don't think he ever just … talked to me. There was always something else, some schedule to be set, or something to be analyzed."

  "Analyzed?"

  "He called it critiquing."

  Cassie's brows furrowed. "Critiquing what?"

  She couldn't see him, other than a faint outline in the dark, but she felt him shrug.

  "How I'd played that day. My grades. How well I'd washed the car or stacked the storage boxes in the garage."

  Cassie felt suddenly cold again, but it was an entirely different kind of feeling. "Your father … critiqued how you stacked boxes?"

  "It was just the way he was. He liked everything in order."

  "Did he make you alphab
etize your toys?" she asked wryly.

  He made an odd sound that told her what she'd meant as a joke, wasn't.

  "Oh, God, he did, didn't he?"

  "It was just his way. I think he felt out of control when my mother died and left him with an eight-year-old kid to raise. So he controlled what he could."

  "There's a name for people like that," Cassie said. "And currently a lot of debate over whether it's hyphenated or not."

  She heard another sound come from him, which could have been a sigh or a smothered chuckle.

  "He was tough," Dar finally said. "But he was as hard on himself as on anyone else."

  "Except you?" she guessed.

  "I was his son," Bar said simply, as if that explained everything. "He had the right to expect more from me."

  Cassie smothered a shiver. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like to live with a father like that. But Dar's words made something else painfully clear to her—the answer to her question of what kind of man could turn his back on his gravely injured son. The kind of man who could make that son believe he had to be more, be better, be perfect, simply because he was his father.

  "Don't get me wrong. He was tough, but he was fair. And when I earned it, he loved me."

  When I earned it.

  Cassie was amazed she couldn't hear the sound of her heart breaking. So this was why Dar was so driven, why everything he did had to be done superlatively. Coming from her own loving family, she couldn't fathom that kind of relationship. She and her parents had had their normal moments of strain, and they had often disagreed, or seemed bewildered at some of the choices she had made, but she had always known she could go to them, especially when things went wrong. She had always known that they loved her, and would always love her, even if she failed. What would it be like to have to earn that love that she'd always taken for granted?

  She wanted to cry out her rage at the man who had done this to him, who had made him believe that a father's love had to be earned. She wanted to shake him, to tell him to listen to what he was saying, to see how wrong it was. But she'd done enough damage today, enough telling him what was wrong with his life. She'd better find another way.

  "Do you think Chase is making Katie earn his love?" she asked carefully.

  "Of course not," he said, so instantly she was relieved; he did realize not everyone was like his father. "My father was … different, that's all. He had a different way of doing things. He was always … sort of distant. Look, I'm not saying he was right. He was just … different. A perfectionist."

  "And he expected you to live up to his standards?"

  "Well … yeah."

  She knew she shouldn't say it, but she couldn't help it. It was so wrong, so absolutely reprehensible to her, that the words were out before she could stop them.

  "And when you weren't … perfect anymore, he abandoned you?"

  He went very still. She waited. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for, an explosion or a simple freezing out. Or fury that someone had told her. What she hadn't expected was the answer she got.

  "Yes."

  It came so hard, and his voice was so low, so shaky, she wondered if he'd ever admitted it aloud before.

  "Oh, God, Dar," she whispered.

  Instinctively she reached for him, drawing him into the hug she'd been wanting to give him since he'd first started talking about his father. At first he resisted, but then he gave in, letting her pull him close, enveloping him in what poor comfort her arms could give. She felt a little frisson of heat ripple through her at the feel of his naked chest, but nothing was more important than just hanging on right now. She felt him shiver, and tightened her embrace. And to her amazement, he let her. And after a long, silent moment, he began to talk again.

  "After the accident, I kept thinking he'd come, that he was just … busy. Or even scared to see me, to look at me. I understood that. I didn't like it myself. Made me sick."

  Too busy to see a son who had nearly died, saving two young lives. Cassie shook with suppressed rage. It took every bit of restraint she had not to shout out her wrath, blasting William Cordell's memory to hell where it belonged. She clenched her arms tighter yet, and held on.

  "I never saw him again. I went through some … pretty down times. When I didn't care if I lived, and a couple of times when I tried … to stop living."

  Cassie shivered; she didn't want to think about that, about a young man driven to such an edge that he tried to take his own life in sheer despair. She could understand it, but she didn't want to think about it. Not when it was Dar.

  "Sometimes … I'd lie awake in the dark, right before dawn, and wonder if I'd ever be glad to see morning again. If I'd ever really come out on the other side."

  She whispered his name again, but nothing else; there was nothing to say in the face of such pain.

  "My father died three years later. At the funeral I met his old business partner. He was shocked to see me. My father had told him I was dead."

  Cassie moaned, beyond hiding her pain now. That she'd known much of this before did nothing to lessen the brutal impact. "I hate him," she said. "I'm sorry. I know he was your father, but I hate him. I wish he weren't dead. I'd like to kill him."

  She felt him chuckle that time, felt it in his chest before she heard it. "You sound awfully fierce, Ms. Cameron."

  "I'm feeling a little fierce right now," she admitted, hiding her relief that he could laugh at all about this. "But I'm sorry I made you … remember."

  "I made my peace with what my father did a long time ago, Cassie. I know it must not seem like it to you, but I did. It's just that … I've never talked about it much. That's what's hard. Not the remembering."

  "I just don't understand. How could a father not be proud of what you did? My God, you saved two lives. You were a he—"

  She stopped when he put a finger to her lips, as she had to him the other day. "Don't, Cassie."

  "But it's true."

  "No. I'm no hero."

  "But—"

  "Heroes don't wonder if it was worth it," he said flatly.

  She sat up then, still holding him, but trying to see his face in the darkness. She could still make out only the darkness of his hair, the shape of his head and the broadness of his shoulders gleaming in the faint light.

  "Don't they?" she asked after a moment.

  He let out an audible breath, but didn't answer.

  "If you had it to do again," she began slowly, "knowing what would happen—"

  "Do you think I haven't thought about that?"

  It burst from him in a rush, and Cassie knew intuitively that she had tapped some deeply hidden part of him. She felt him try to pull out of her arms, but refused to let go. After a moment he went slack against her, his head lolling half on the sofa back, half on her shoulder.

  "Do you think I haven't spent a hundred, hell, a thousand nights since, wondering what I'd do?" he said, such pain echoing in his voice that it sounded as if he'd had to pull each word out of a vat of acid. "I hated that hero tag. Because I knew better. What I did wasn't heroics, it was just a simple, gut reaction. I acted on instinct, not courage. If I'd had time to think about it, I probably wouldn't have done it at all."

  "Of course you wouldn't. Who would?"

  He went so very still she couldn't even feel him breathing.

  "What?" he whispered at last.

  "Who would, if they had time to think about it? Who would think about it, and then go ahead and give up his own legs for two kids, total strangers, who had gotten themselves into that predicament on their own? A few candidates for sainthood, perhaps, but nobody I know."

  He didn't speak, but she heard him swallow, as if his throat were tight.

  "Do you really think that wondering if it was worth it lessens what you did? Do you think those kids haven't wondered themselves, wondered why you saved them at such cost, when they didn't even know you? Do you think they feel they owe you any less?"

  "I … no. I know they don't.
They came to see me, once."

  More than your own father did, Cassie thought, but didn't say it.

  "Their parents brought them. They started crying. Calling me a hero. God, I hated that. So I was…"

  He trailed off, but Cassie could just imagine. "Rude?" she suggested lightly. "Abrasive? Exasperating?"

  For a moment he was silent, and she was afraid she'd gone too far. But then she felt him move and heard a sound that was undeniably a chuckle.

  "Yeah. All of those, probably."

  He sounded so much calmer now, and that rigid tension had left his muscles, so Cassie leaned back once more. Her long legs were protesting, so she straightened them out. At the same moment Dar moved back, as if to give her room, and she wound up with her legs stretched across his thighs, which were clad in a pair of his usual altered sweats. She hesitated, then settled herself comfortably; if he didn't like the contact, then he could move, she told herself.

  "Your feet are going to get cold," was all he said.

  "I'm not that cold anymore."

  She heard what sounded like a sigh. "Neither am I."

  Cassie felt her throat tighten and her eyes sting. And if she was being a fool to read a world of meaning into those simple words, she thought, then so be it.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  «^»

  Cassie moved against him again, slowly, caressing his achingly hard flesh with the soft curves of her own. Dar's hand slid down to the indentation of her waist, to pull her to him. She gave a little sigh and nestled closer, her back against his bare chest, her head pillowed on his arm, the sweet-smelling silk of her hair teasing his skin, the taut swell of her buttocks pressing warmly against him. She felt so good. So damn good he wanted to— He woke up with a start. For an instant he thought it had just been a dream; he'd had more than one vividly erotic one since Cassie had appeared. But that perception lasted only a second; the warm, soft reality of Cassie cuddled against him wiped everything else out of his mind.