The Hellion Read Online Free PDF Page A

condition, from his clothing to his        35 grass, and it was often joked about in their social circle that when and if he sold his property, he'd come back to reprimand anyone who dared let it fall into disrepair.

    Rachel fondly placed her hands on his forearms. "You don't have to worry about me, Marshall. I can take care of myself."

    "I know you can. But I promised Owen."

    "But the furnace won't break down, and the pool will keep filtering, and ... and ..." Suddenly Rachel was immensely glad to have Marshall there, a living, breathing entity who knew how dreadful it would have been for her to face the empty house alone at this moment.

    She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but tears spilled, nonetheless. "Oh, Marshall ... oh, God ..." Her chest felt crushed as he took her into his arms, gently, consolingly. "Oh, thank you for coming home with me. I didn't know how I was going to face it alone."

    "You don't have to thank me. You know that." His voice was gruff against her hair. "I loved him, too."

    "I'll ... I'll be all right in a minute."

    "Take it from me, dear, you won't be. Not in a minute, or a week, or even a month. But whenever you need somebody, all you have to do is call, and I'll be right here."

    Before he left, Marshall walked through the house to make sure everything was safe and sound. Watching his tall form walk away, she thought, Whatever would I do without him? He was as steady as Gibraltar, as dependable as taxes, and as sensible as rain. Owen said before he died, "You know, Rachel, you can rely upon Marshall for anything."

    She had wondered at the time if Owen was hinting that he himself might choose Marshall for her ... if and when. But Marshall wasn't that sort. Not steady-z-you-go, polite, socially adept Marshall. He was simply the kindest man she knew, and one with whom she'd shared the most devastating of human experiences not once, but twice.

    But when he was gone, she still faced the desolation of going to bed alone. The house seemed eerie, especially the bedroom she and Owen had shared. When she'd donned her nightgown, she crept instead

    to one of the guest bedrooms across the hall,     37 lying stiffly upon the strange-feeling mattress in the dark--unmoving, for a long time. Rachel had been propelled from one necessity to the next for so long, putting off the awesome need to cry. But there was little else she could have done, with no children to take over the burdens. It was the thought of children that did it at last. The dam cracked, then buckled, and when her tears came, they struck with the force of a tidal wave. She gripped the sheets, twisting in despair, sobbing pitifully into the dark. The racking sound of those sobs, coming back to her own ears, only made her cry the harder.

    She cried for all the pain Owen had suffered, and for her own powerlessness to help him. She cried for the dream-filled girl she'd once been, and the disillusioned woman she now was. She cried because for almost two decades she'd been married to a man with whom she'd had a comfortably staid marriage when what she'd wanted was occasional tumult. She cried because in one split second she had looked up at a man's face across a quiet graveyard, and that tumult had sprung within her when it was her husband who should have caused it to surface all these years. She cried because it

    seemed a sin to admit such a thing to herself on the very night of his funeral.

    And when her body was aching with loss and desolation, she cried for Owen's child, which she'd never conceived.

    And for Tommy Lee's child, which she had.

                 CHAPTER TWO

       On the fourth morning following the funeral, Tommy Lee found little to smile about. He awakened sprawled on the sofa, still wearing a tweed sports coat, trousers, and tie, a foul taste in his mouth, and a head beating like a voodoo drum. Gingerly he rolled over, sat up, and nursed his tender head.

    Upstairs things were a little