Beloved (4 page)

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Beloved

Diana Palmer

175

shouldn't have said it, but I was angry that she'd tried to make
me jealous, as if she thought I might actually feel
attracted to
her." He sighed. "I thought she was so hard that
nothing I said
would faze her."

^“
And I thought I used to be blind," Corrigan said.

Simon glanced at him, scowling. ''What
do you mean?"

Corrigan looked at his brother and tried to speak. Finally
he
just smiled faintly and turned away.
"Forget it."

The door to
Tira's
room opened
a minute later and Dr. Gaines
came out. He spotted
the two men down the hall and joined them.

"Don't go back in there," he told Simon flatly.
"She's too
close to the edge already. She doesn't
need you to push her the
rest of the
way."

"I
didn't do a damned thing," Simon shot back, and now he
looked dangerous, "except walk in the
door!"

Dr. Gaines' lips thinned. He glanced at Corrigan, who
only
shrugged and shook his head.

"I'm going to try to get her to go to a friend of
mine, a therapist. She could use some counseling," Gaines added.

"She's not a nut case,"
Simon said, affronted.

Dr. Gaines looked into that cold, unaware face and
frowned.
"You were state attorney general
for four years," he said.
"You're still
a well-known trial lawyer, an intelligent man. How
can you be this stupid?"

"Will someone just tell me what's going on?"
Simon de
manded.

Dr. Gaines looked at Corrigan, who held out a hand,
palm-up,
inviting the doctor to do the dirty
work.

"She'll
kill us both if she finds out we told him” Gaines re
marked to Corrigan.

"It's better than letting her
die."

"Amen." He looked at Simon, who was torn
between puzzle
ment and fury. "Simon, she's been
in love with you for years,"
Dr. Gaines said in a hushed,
reluctant tone. "I tried to get her to
give
up the ranch and all that fund-raising mania years ago, be-

cause they were only a way for her to keep near you. She wore
herself
out at it, hoping against hope that if you were in close
contact, you might begin to feel something for
her, but I knew
that wasn't going to
happen. All I had to do was see you together
to realize she didn't have
a chance. Am I right?" he asked Cor
rigan,
who nodded.

Simon leaned back against the wall. He felt as if
someone, had
put a knife right through him. He
couldn't even speak.

"What you said to her was a kindness, although I
don't imagine
you see it that way now," Dr.
Gaines continued doggedly. ''She
had to be
made to see that she couldn't go on living a lie, and the
changes in her life recently are proof that she's
realized how you
feel about her.
She'll accept it, in time, and get on with her life.
It will be the very
best thing for her. She's trying to be all things to all people, until she was
worn to a nub. She's been headed for
a
nervous breakdown for weeks, the way she's pushed herself,
with this one-woman art show added to the load she
was already
carrying. But she'll be
all right." He put a sympathetic hand on
Simon's good arm. "It's not your fault. She's levelheaded about
everything except you. But if you want to help
her, for old time's
sake, stay away
from her. She's got enough on her plate right
now."

He nodded politely to Corrigan and went on down the hall.

Simon still hadn't moved, or spoken. He was pale and
drawn,
half crazy from the doctor's revelation.

Corrigan got on the other side of him and took his arm,
drawing
him along. "We'll get a cup of
coffee somewhere on the
way
back to your office," he told his older brother.

Simon allowed himself to be pulled out the door. He
wasn't
sure he remembered how to walk. He felt shattered.

Minutes later, he was sitting in a small cafe with his
brother, drinking strong coffee.

"She tried to kill herself over
me," Simon said finally.
"She missed.
She won't try again. They'll make sure of it."

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He leaned forward. "Simon, she's been overextending for years,
you
know that. No one woman could have done as much as she
has without risking her health, if not her sanity. If it hadn't been
what you said to her, it would have been
something else...maybe
even this showing at the gallery that she was working
night and
day to get ready for."

Simon forced himself to breathe normally. He still
couldn't
quite believe it all. He sipped his
coffee and stared into space.

"Did you know how she felt?"
he asked Corrigan.

"She didn't tell me, if that's what you mean,"
his brother said.
"But it was fairly obvious, the way she talked about
you. I felt
sorry for her. We all knew how
much you loved
Melia
, that you've
never let yourself get close to another woman
since the wreck.
Tira
had to know that there was no hope in that
direction."

The coffee in Simon's cup sloshed a little as he put it
down.
"It seems so clear now," he
remarked absently. "She was always
around, even
when there didn't seem a reason for it. She worked
on committees for organizations I belonged to, she did charity
work for businesses where I was a trustee."
He shook his head.
"But I never
noticed."

"I know."

He looked up. "John knew,"
he said suddenly.

Corrigan hesitated. Then he nodded.

Simon sucked in a harsh breath. "Good God, I broke
up their
marriage!"

"Maybe. I don't know.
Tira
never talks about John." His eyes
narrowed thoughtfully. "But haven't you ever noticed that she and
John's
father are still friends? He doesn't blame her for his son's
death. Shouldn't he, if it was all
Tira's
fault?"

Simon didn't want to think about it. He was sick to his
stomach.
"I pushed her at John," he
recalled.

"I remember. They seemed to have a
lot in common."

"They had me in common." Simon laughed bitterly.
"She
loved
me..."
He took a long sip of coffee and burned his mouth.
The pain was welcome; it took his mind off his
conscience.

"She can't ever know that we told you that,"
Corrigan said
firmly, looking as formidable as his brother. "She's
entitled to
salvage a little of her pride.
The newspapers got hold of the story,
Simon. It's in the morning
edition. The headline's really some
thing—local
socialite in suicide attempt. She's going to have hell
living it down. I don't imagine they'll let her
see a newspaper,
but someone will
tell her, just the same." His voice was harsh.
"Some people love rubbing salt in
wounds."

Simon rested his forehead against his one hand. He was so
drained that he could barely function. It had been the worst day
of his life; in some ways, worse than the wreck that had
cost him
everything.

For years,
Tira's
eyes had
warmed at his approach, her mouth
had smiled
her welcome. She'd become radiant just because he
was near her, and he hadn't known how she felt, with all those
blatant signs.

Now, this morning, she'd looked at him with such hatred that
he still felt sick from the violence of it.
Her eyes had flashed fire,
her face had burned
with rage. He'd never seen her like that.

Corrigan searched his brother's worn face. "Don't
take it so
hard, Simon. None of this is your
fault. She put too much pressure
on herself and now she's paying the
consequences. She'll be all
right."

"She
loved me," he said again, speaking the words harshly, as
if he still couldn't believe them.

"You can't make people love you back," his
brother replied.
"Funny, Dorie and I saw her in the
grocery store a few weeks
ago, and she said
that same thing. She had no illusions about the
way you felt, regardless of how it looks."

Simon's eyes burned with anguish. "You don't know
what I
said to her, though. I accused her of
killing John, of being so
unconcerned about
his happiness that she let him go into a dangerous job that he didn't have the
experience to handle." His face
twisted. "I said that she
was shallow and cold and selfish, that I
had
nothing but contempt for her and that I'd never let a woman

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like her get close to me..." his eyes closed. ''Dear God, how it
must have hurt her to hear that from me."

Corrigan let out a savage breath. "Why didn't you
just load the
gun for her?"

"Didn't I?" the older man asked with tortured eyes.

Corrigan
backed off. "Well, it's water under the bridge now.
She's safely out of your life and she'll learn to
get along on her
own, with a little
help. You can go back to your law practice and
consider yourself off the endangered species list."

Simon didn't say another word. He stared into his coffee
with
sightless eyes until it grew cold.

Tira
slept for the rest of the day. When she opened her eyes, the room was
empty. There was a faint light from the wall and
she felt pleasantly drowsy.

The night nurse came in, smiling, to check her vital
signs. She
was given another dose of medicine.
Minutes later, without having
dared remember the
state she was in that morning, she went back to sleep.

When she woke up, a tall, blond, handsome man with dark
eyes
was sitting by the bed, looking quite
devastating in white slacks
and a red pullover
knit shirt.

"Charles," she mumbled, and smiled. "How
nice of you to
come!"

"Who'll I talk to if you kill yourself, you
idiot?" he muttered,
glowering at her.
"What a stupid thing to do."

She pushed herself up on an elbow, and pushed the mass
of
red-gold hair out of her eyes She made a
rough sound in her
throat. "I wasn't trying to
commit suicide!" she grumbled. "I got
drunk and Mrs. Lester found an old empty prescription bottle and
went
ballistic." She shifted sleepily and yawned. "Well, I can't blame
her, I guess. I still had the pistol in my hand and there was
a hole in the wall..."

"Pistol!?"

"Calm down," she said, grimacing. "My head
hurts. Yes, a

pistol." She grinned at him a little sheepishly. "I was going
to
shoot the mouse."

His eyes widened. "Excuse
me?"

"There's a mouse," she said. "I've set
traps and put out bait,
and he just keeps
coming back into my kitchen. After a couple of
drinks, I remembered a scene in
True
Grit,
where John Wayne
shot a rat, and
when I got halfway through the whiskey bottle, it seemed perfectly logical that
I should do that to my mouse." She
chuckled a little weakly. "You had to be there," she added
help
lessly.

"I suppose so." He searched her bloodshot eyes.
"All those
charity events, anybody calls and asks
you to help, and you work day and night to organize things. You're everybody's
helper. Now you're working on a collection of sculpture and still trying to
keep
up with your social obligations. I'm
surprised you didn't fall out
weeks ago. I tried
to tell you. You know I did."

She
nodded and sighed. "I know. I just didn't realize how hard
I was working."

"You never do. You need to get married and have
kids. That
would keep you busy."

She lifted both eyebrows. "Are you offering to
sacrifice your
self?"

He chuckled. "Maybe it would be the best thing for
both of
us," he said wistfully.
"We're in love with people who don't want
us. At least we like each other."

"Yes. But marriage should be more
than that."

He shrugged. "Just a thought." He leaned over
and patted her
hand. "Get well. There's a society
ball next week and you have
to go with me.
She's going to be there."

Tira
knew who
she
was—his
sister-in-law, the woman that
Percy would have
died to marry. She'd never noticed him, despite
his blazing good looks, before she married his half brother. In
fact, she seemed to actually dislike him, and Charles's
half brother
was twenty years her senior, a
stiff-necked stuffed-shirt whom