Defending His Own

tell her. I was seventeen and pregnant by a man who didn't love me or want me. I didn't know what else to do.

'You told Miss Carol?'

'I needed someone to talk to about what had happened.' About the fact that I was carrying your child. 'Who else would I have gone to other than my own mother?'

'Did you tell your mother that I'd forced you?' Cold shivers covered Ashe like a blanket of frost spreading across the earth on a winter night.

'No. I told my mother the truth, all of it. She'd known, of course, that I'd left the country club with you that night and she knew why.'

'I'm surprised your father didn't hunt us down.'

'He didn't know I was with you. He didn't see me leave,' Deborah said. 'Mother told him I was spending the night with a girlfriend after the engagement party.'

'I know Miss Carol often kept the complete truth from your father in order to maintain peace, so why did she feel it necessary to tell him about what had happened between you and me that night?'

Because I was pregnant! 'I was very upset, very unhappy. Mother thought she was doing the right thing by telling Daddy. She couldn't have known what he'd do. And I never knew anything about what he did. Obviously, Daddy realized what a mistake he'd made. You were never arrested. If you had been, I would have told the truth. I would have made them understand that what happened that night was my fault, not yours.'

'Deborah?'

'Well, it was, wasn't it? I mean, I did throw myself at you and practically beg you to make love to me, didn't I?'

'If I'd been more of a man and less a boy that night, I'd have turned you down and saved us both a lot of misery.'

'And that's what the memory of that night has been for you, hasn't it, a misery?' Deborah shut her eyes, capturing her tears beneath closed lids.

Dear God, no! The results had been a misery, but not that night. Never that night! 'No, honey, that's not true. The memory of that night is bittersweet for me.'

'More bitter than sweet.' Swallowing her tears, she lowered her head, wrapped one arm across her stomach and cupped the side of her face in her other hand. 'That's why you left town, wasn't it? To get away from me?'

'I left town because your father and the D.A. gave me no other choice.' Ashe slid across the seat, grabbed Deborah by the shoulders and shook her gently several times. 'Look at me, dammit.' With her head still bowed, she raised her eyes to meet his. 'Your father told me that if I didn't leave town and never come back, he'd make sure I did time for rape. He wanted me out of your life for good.'

'No, he wouldn't have… He knew. Oh, Ashe, he knew.'

'He knew what?' Ashe gripped her shoulders, tightening his hold when she didn't immediately respond.

'He knew I was—' She'd almost said pregnant with your baby. 'He knew I loved you, that I would never have testified against you, that I would have made a fool of myself to protect you.'

A searing pain ripped through Ashe, the hot, cauterizing pain of truth, killing the festering infection of lies and suspicions, preventing him from clinging to past resentments.

'Dear God, Deborah. All these years I've thought…' He pulled her into his arms. She trembled, and he knew she was on the verge of tears, that she was holding them in check, being strong. He stroked her back; she laid her head on his chest.

She had not betrayed him. She hadn't even told her father, only her mother. She had never accused him of forcing her or seducing her. Lies. All lies. Wallace Vaughn's lies to force Ashe out of Deborah's life. Had the old man been that afraid that sooner or later Ashe would destroy Deborah's life?

Ashe found himself kissing the side of her face, along her hairline, one hand continuing to stroke her back while he threaded the fingers of his other hand through her hair, caressing her tenderly.

'Have you hated me all these years, Ashe?' she asked, her voice a whisper against his chest.

'I've hated you. I've hated myself. Hell, I've hated just about everyone and everything associated with my past.' When she gazed up at him, he dotted her forehead with kisses. 'But I never hated what we shared that night, the feelings inside me when we made love. It had never been like that for me before.' He swallowed hard. 'And it's never been that way for me again. Not ever.'

'Oh, Ashe.' She slipped her arms around him, burrowing her body into his, seeking and finding a closer joining.

He took her mouth like a dying man clinging to life, as if without the taste of her he could not go on. She accepted the kiss, returning it full measure, her hands clawing at his back, inching their way up beneath his jacket, yanking his shirt from his slacks, making contact with his naked flesh. Ashe thrust his tongue deeper into her mouth, their tongues mating furiously.

Breathless, their lips separated, but they clung to each other, Deborah unbuttoning Ashe's shirt, Ashe lifting Deborah's sweater up and under her arms.

'I've wanted you since that first day I came back to town.' He nuzzled her neck with his nose as he lifted his hand to her lace-covered breast. 'I've called myself every kind of fool, but nothing's eased this ache inside me.'

She curled her index finger around a swirl of dark chest hair, then leaned over to kiss one tiny nipple. Ashe groaned. 'I hated you for making me want you again,' she said. 'I swore no one would ever hurt me the way you did, and here I am throwing myself at you again as if I were seventeen.'

'No, honey, no.' He took her face in both his hands, looking deep into her eyes, smiling his irresistible smile. 'This works both ways. I want you and you want me. Neither of us are kids. We're two responsible adults who are as frustrated as hell.'

She laughed. 'Ashe, I don't know if I can handle this, what I'm feeling. It scares me. It scares me more now than it did when I was seventeen.' She circled his neck with her arms, pressing her cheek against his. 'When I was seventeen I was so in love with you that nothing we did seemed wrong. I didn't know the first thing about sex. Now … well, now I'm aching with wanting you. It's different now. It's—'

'It's right this time, honey,' he said against her lips. 'No fairy tales, no declarations of undying love, just a man and a woman who want each other desperately. Mutual desire.'

'Yes.' She nodded. 'Mutual desire.' You're wrong, she wanted to shout. It isn't all that different now. I'm still in love with you and you still don't return that love.

'Let's vanquish all those bad memories,' he said. 'Let's lay the past to rest. Tonight.'

His kiss was less frantic this time, more tender and giving, yet as hot and needy as the one before. There was no way to make him understand that she could never lay the past to rest, that Allen was the embodiment of that night so long ago when a young and foolish girl had given herself to a man who didn't love her.

Ashe held her in his arms, burying his face in her neck, breathing in the sweet fragrance of her hair. 'We can't make love back at your house and I know you don't want to make love here, in the car, the way we did that night. Where can we go, honey? A motel room seems cheap and I want this night to be special for you—for us.'

'You're wrong about my not wanting to make love here and now, in the car,' she said. 'I do.'

'Why would you want to—'

'I'm not sure I can explain how I feel, but… Well, it would somehow validate that first time. I know it sounds crazy, but… I need for us to make love here, now, in the car, the way we did that night when… Please, Ashe, make love to me.'

'That's exactly what you said to me that night.' And damn his rotten soul, he hadn't been able to resist her. She had been the sweetest temptation he'd ever known—and she still was.

'I guess I'm still begging.' A lone tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

Ashe kissed the teardrop. 'No, Deborah, I'm the one doing the begging this time. I'm the one who'll die if I can't have you. I'm the one willing to do anything to make you happy, to see you smile, to make your forget.'

He actually remembered every word she'd said to him that night when she'd told him she wanted to make him happy, wanted to make him forget Whitney, wanted to make him smile again. She had pleaded with him to make love to her, saying she'd die if he didn't.

'You remember what I said.'

'Every word.' He lifted her sweater up and off, tossing it into the back seat, then unhooked her bra and eased