Outsider Read Free

I never got the paperwork.”
    Until that moment, he’d never realized that he hadn’t gotten a final copy of it. He’d not kept track of it and he’d never had to prove that his former marriage had been annulled. Odd, he thought irrelevantly, that he didn’t have a copy of his second divorce papers, either. But Maureen had them somewhere, he was sure.
    He blinked, brought back to the question. “Hunter wants to go back to Tucson. I’m his replacement.”
    That was news to her. Hunter’s wife, Jennifer, was her best friend, and the other woman said they loved it in Houston. She lifted one thin eyebrow. Her eyes, dark as night, were her best feature, next to those soft, sensual lips. She wasn’t pretty. She had a beautiful complexion, and thick, silky blond hair. Her breasts were small, like her waist, but she had flaring, nice hips and pretty, long legs. He’d seen her without clothing only once, but he’d never managed to banish the memory. Sarina, laughing with him as they walked in the park. Sarina, in his arms, dying for him. Sarina, crying out in pain when he couldn’t stop, Sarina, shuddering in the aftermath of a passion that he couldn’t control…
    He pulled himself back to the present. She didn’t know how tortured he’d been afterward, or to what depths he’d sunk trying to forget what he’d done to her. She didn’t know. He couldn’t tell her, even now.
    â€œHow long have you been working for Ritter?” he asked abruptly.
    â€œSeven years,” she replied without raising her eyes. “But I’m only in Houston temporarily, working on a special project. Bernadette and I live in Tucson.”
    Bernadette. That name rang a bell. He recalled the happy months he’d spent with Sarina in the old days, while he was guarding her millionaire father from a kidnapping attempt by people who wanted the location of his secret mines which produced a priceless strategic metal. Colby, who worked for military intelligence, was assigned to keep tabs on him. In the process he’d met Sarina, who was living at home. They’d become close at once. She was in college, so he assumed she was in her early twenties.
    He still didn’t know that she’d graduated a year ahead of her class in high school and done two years of college in one. He didn’t know, either, that she’d been only seventeen at the time of their forced marriage. They’d been caught by her father and two of his business associates and their wives in a compromising situation. Her father had literally forced Colby to marry her, using his career as a threat, to save face with his social set. At the time, Colby had been working for the CIA, and he loved his job. The old man could have cost him his profession, and Colby knew it, so he’d given in with bad grace. Carrington had assumed that Colby and Sarina had been intimate. They hadn’t.
    Their wedding night was payback for Colby. He still regretted it. Of course, a day later annulment papers were filed, the minute the millionaire found out from the private detective he’d hired that Colby had considerable Apache blood and that his total worth was somewhat shy of the impression his luxurious style of dress had led the older man to believe it was. Colby didn’t know how Sarina had responded to her father’s demand that she lie about her wedding night and sign the annulment papers. He’d left her in tears in the early hours of the morning, so angry and full of self-contempt that he didn’t even look at her as he left the room.
    Before that final meeting, in the early days of their friendship, they’d talked about children in a casual sort of way. She’d always wanted children. A girl, she told him dreamily, and she’d name her Bernadette. There was an old movie she’d seen, and that was the heroine’s name. She thought it was beautiful.
    â€œWe’d