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  "What Hurt You So Badly,"

  he asked softly, “that you had to run away? Or shall I tell you?”

  “No . . . no, I don’t want to hear it!” she blurted, her voice thickening with emotion.

  Struggling against his superior strength only seemed to excite him, and the low laugh that feathered along her cheek did serious damage to her resistance. She moaned his name, and his answering kiss seemed to go on and on.

  “By this time, I know how to handle you, Willy Silverthorne,” he murmured. His arms held her captive—not that she would have had the strength to try and escape ... as he well knew.

  * * *

  DIXIE BROWNING

  grew up on Hatteras Island off the coast of North Carolina. She is an accomplished and well-known artist of watercolors but thoroughly enjoys her second career, writing.

  Renegade Player

  Dixie Browning

  SILHOUETTE BOOKS, a Simon & Schuster Division of

  GULF & WESTERN CORPORATION

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  Copyright © 1982 by Dixie Browning

  Distributed by Pocket Books

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Silhouette Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-57142-7

  First Silhouette Books printing April, 1982

  10 987654321

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  SILHOUETTE, SILHOUETTE ROMANCE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster.

  America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Chapter One

  On the last day of May, as on every day since the first week Willy Silverthorne had come to work for Rumark Realty, the low growl of her persimmon-colored 450SL, as it turned off Highway 158 onto Bittern Drive, signaled an exodus from office chairs so that by the time Willy tooled the little sports car into the parking lot behind the office complex familiarly known as the mushroom patch, every window was filled—every window, that is, except one: the last and largest in the Collier Consulting Engineers Building.

  As she whipped the polished thoroughbred into the employees lot, passing all the more plebeian vehicles parked in what was already sweltering sunshine, and took her place in one of the only three shaded spots, there came a collective sigh from the three surrounding octagonal buildings.

  “Power glide,” murmured an agent in the office of MacNulty Insurance. He watched reverently while Willy collected her purse and crossed the softening asphalt to the building that housed Rumark Realty.

  “That one’s built for speed and handling,” sighed a design engineer in CCE.

  It was perfectly natural to refer to Willy Silverthorne in automotive terms; her greatest enthusiasms at the present time were cars and food, not necessarily in that order. By the time Willy had worked in the mushroom patch for three days, every man in all three office buildings, whether married or not, had latched on to every bit of information available about her. The few women, if only as a matter of self-defense, were not far behind.

  By the time she had finished her first month as a newly licensed real-estate saleswoman, Willy had tactfully refused dates with all but three of the men who had asked her, and had made fast friends with the only other woman at Rumark Realty, Dotty Sealy, a bouncy brunette who worked as general secretary while she studied for her own license as a realtor.

  On the morning of June first, it was nine-fourteen when the rush to the windows commenced. Willy was seldom, if ever, on time, a fact that did not seem to bother her boss, who was one of the three men she dated. Today each window held at least one viewer and this time Willy might have sensed a new element of expectancy in the air, had she even been aware of her audience.

  As usual, she down-shifted and slowed her 450SL up the slight grade into the lot, then gunned the motor for the final maneuver that would position her in the space marked MR. COLLIER, between Ed MacNulty’s Cadillac and the late-model station wagon bearing the logo of her own firm.

  The sound of rubber screeching on asphalt could be heard clearly above the drone of the central air-conditioner and it brought several masculine looks of commiseration, plus a few of smug satisfaction—these from the men who had never broken through Willy’s friendly but impregnable barrier—and from the office that had stood empty since Randy Collier’s leaving; both sets of expressions would have given Willy more than a moment’s misgivings had she been able to see them.

  There was a car in her place! A superb piece of machinery she recognized as a Porsche, although the exact model was unfamiliar to her ... as was the owner. Dumbfounded, Willy sat in her car and stared for several minutes before reversing thoughtfully and backing into a place in the sun.

  She had used that particular parking spot ever since her second date with Randy Collier. He had volunteered to park his own car somewhere else, claiming the white top was less vulnerable to the heat than was the black top of her dusky-orange Mercedes, and then, after Randy had left Nags Head under conditions she preferred to forget, it had seemed silly to stop parking there. After all, no one had come to take his place as head of CCE, and while his office went unoccupied, she continued to park there with all the aplomb of a girl who had been materially, if not emotionally, spoiled by an indulgent parent for the first nineteen of her twenty-one years.

  Her aplomb might have suffered a bit had she been able to see behind the tall, tinted window of the largest office of CCE. The man who stood there observing her leisurely and belated arrival wore no admiring expression. His obsidian eyes were narrowed in a face that was lean to the point of tautness, the muscles of his broad shoulders bunched slightly as he stroked an aggressive jaw thoughtfully with one well-kept hand. The morning sun, rendered impotent by the gray thermal glass, cast shadows under his well-defined cheekbones and the high forehead that was tanned to the color of raw teak. Not a strand of his black hair was out of place, although a lock in the front seemed inclined to rebel, and there was nothing about his summer-weight, custom-tailored business suit to indicate other than a sophisticated man with the wealth to indulge his cultivated tastes.

  And yet there was an element about him that was alien to an office setting, that had nothing to do with the dictating of letters or the drafting of company policies. There was a quality of danger about the man, of raw, sensual power that could quell with the lift of a brow and inflame, in the case of a woman, with the same gesture, for few women would be immune to such blatant masculinity.

  Certainly not the woman who stood at his side, a slightly smug look of superiority on her flawlessly groomed face. “Well, now you’ve seen what all the men in the mushroom patch are drooling over. Whatever signals she’s sending out with that . . . that come-hither walk of hers remain a mystery to me, I can assure you, but she has every man in all three buildings panting after her and you can’t tell me it’s all for nothing.”

  “I suspect the walk you find questionable is merely a natural result of her construction. Wide hips, long legs,” Kiel Faulkner murmured absently, not sparing his secretary a glance. Instead, he continued to stare thoughtfully after the tall, slender figure disappearing up the ramp that led to the Rumark Building. There was nothing in particular visible from his present vantage point that would explain the general masculine reaction to the girl whose parking place he had just commandeered, nothing except for a walk that, if she could bottle and sell it, would net her a cool fortune.

  “What was it this time, a freighter come ashore and you had to call the Coast Guard?” Do
tty Sealy gibed with exaggerated patience.

  Willy grinned. “Hang gliders. There were three all set to go off the top of Jockey’s Ridge and I just had to stop and watch. One of these days I’m going to—”

  “No you’re not,” Dotty finished for her. “Not until they install elevators on Jockey’s Ridge, you’re not.”

  Willy’s natural laziness was well known. It was not really a disinclination to work, for she did her share and then some, often taking over for one of the other two agents when they had to go out unexpectedly, or staying on without demur to finish up a report that had to go out. She did everything at her own relaxed rate of speed, but that was not to say she didn’t accomplish more in the long run than Frank, who came early and stayed late, or Pete, who rushed madly wherever he went. As in the case of the hare and the tortoise, the tortoise in the form of Willy Silverthorne often ambled across the finish line well ahead of the others. As even now she was ambling across the thick sand-colored carpet toward the office marked Matthew Rumark, Pres.

  “ ’Morning, Matt,” she drawled melodiously.

  “Seventeen minutes late, Wilhelmina. You’re seventeen minutes late and yesterday it was twenty-three. How is it that you can break every rule of office behavior I put on the books and still outsell the others?” he demanded with resignation.

  Willy shrugged her shoulders under the yellow T-shirt she wore with her denim skirt. “I dunno . . . just lucky, I guess.” The lids that half-hid her dark green eyes seemed weighted down with their burden of luxuriant blond lashes.

  Matt Rumark shook his head slowly, not even attempting to hide his admiration of the exquisitely modeled face before him. The fact that that face was covered with a fine layer of freckles that its owner did little or nothing to try to disguise did nothing to mar its loveliness, nor did the heavy weight of sun-streaked blond hair suffer for its casual treatment, being pulled ruthlessly back and tied haphazardly with a cotton handkerchief. Willy Silverthorne’s beauty was structural rather than superficial, but her true loveliness stemmed more from a genuine friendliness than from any deliberate charm, a fact that, considering her background, was little less than startling. Somehow, her indolent good humor had a way of disarming female competitors and would-be suitors alike, with few exceptions.

  “All right, all right, I know when I’m licked,” Matt admitted, shuffling through the litter on his desk and coming up with two new folders. “As boss around here, I owe it to the others to rack you up for getting away with what they wouldn’t dare, so consider it done. Now, here are a couple of new listings at Hatteras. Want ’em?”

  “Sure,” Willy answered slowly, slipping off a sandal to scratch a mosquito bite. “If no one else wants them, I’ll take them, but what about Pete? He and Connie are expecting again in September and he could probably use the extra.”

  Matt shook his head exasperatedly. “Willy, love, did it ever occur to you that a competitive staff means more business for everybody? With every agent out hustling to outsell the others, more gets sold, which means more profit for all of us. Profits . . . remember? The old filthy lucre? It’s the name of the game, honey . . . it’s what keeps the old capitalistic system ticking over. We make more profit, we expand and hire more people, who in turn make more money, and we all pay our taxes and Uncle Sam is fat and happy, and then we make even more so that we can throw it around a little—that way we spread the joy; in my case, to the purveyors of fishing tackle and bonded whiskey; in yours, to the fancy car dealers and top-drawer restaurants. Then, they in turn grow filthy rich and hire more people and pay more taxes and—”

  “Hey, I get the message,” Willy laughed.

  He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think you really do, but in case you’re worried, no, Pete doesn’t want it. Connie doesn’t want him to be that far away when she might have to call him to boil water any minute, and before you drag in Frank, let me remind you of one thing: I’m boss around here, and if I say you sell ’em, you sell ’em!”

  Willy laughed, a sound not unlike water rushing over small pebbles, and she stood up. “I sell ’em, Mr. Rumark, sir,” she surrendered. She was completely unaware of the eyes that watched her almost wistfully as she crossed to the door, eyes that gazed longingly after her five feet, eight inches of convex and concave curves. Nor did she hear the sigh of pure frustration that followed her out because she was already asking Dotty if she knew who the silver Porsche was.

  “The who?” Dotty repeated, sliding her glasses back up on her short nose.

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” Willy explained patiently. “I came barreling into the parking lot this morning and just about creamed it. Somebody parked it in my spot, and if I hadn’t stood on my brakes, I’d have ended up in the back seat.”

  “Search me. Must be somebody at MacNulty’s or CCE. My wheels came out of Detroit so long ago they’ve lost their northern accent, and as far as I know, you’re the only one around here who runs anything that even approaches a Porsche.”

  “Mmmm, I’d like to approach it, right up under the steering wheel,” Willy murmured, her husky drawl unconsciously seductive as she put away her purse and opened the folders Matt had handed her.

  During the remainder of the week, Willy continued to take her place in the sun without comment, leaving the shade to the Porsche, which she had by now identified as a 928S. It had been nice while it lasted and she had felt no compunction using Randy’s place, even after he had gone. After all, it wasn’t her fault he had mistaken her good nature for something more and ended up in traction and disgrace. She had made it clear to him from the very first that she wasn’t interested in anything serious, but her idea of serious and Randy’s had been miles apart. Willy had been perfectly willing to go out to restaurants with him or to cook at her apartment for him, and they had both enjoyed the live plays at the beach and the Lost Colony performance. They had danced and laughed together, and when he had followed her up to her apartment one night after a pretty freewheeling party, she had offered to make coffee for him before he headed home, even though she was more than a little disgusted with him for drinking too much.

  He had taken her invitation to coffee for something more, and before she managed to eject him, he had ruined a perfectly good blouse and bruised her rather badly. She had fought back angrily and he had accused her of teasing, which had angered her still more, for she had never deliberately led him on. With the gloves off, it had all come out in the open: either she give him what he wanted or he took it, it was that simple. After all the money he had spent on her, a dumb little office worker, he intended to collect.

  Willy’s strength under fire had surprised her, and she had managed to throw him out ignominiously, but then, she had never been so frightened in her life; and when she heard the next day that he had wrecked his car before daylight and been found to have an extremely high alcohol content in his bloodstream, she had shuddered and wondered how she could have been taken in by his bland good looks and pleasant manners.

  Randy had not returned to CCE. Willy knew that it had been his father’s firm and she suspected he must be in a good bit of hot water with the board of directors or whoever reigned in his absence. She didn’t ask, nor did anyone tell her, and she had resumed her social life with an occasional date with Matt, who knew from the first that she was strictly a career woman. There was also Richy, the nineteen-year-old who lived with his mother in the apartment below her own. She had met him during spring break when he brought home two college friends, and because she could see that it mattered so awfully much to him to be seen on good terms with an “older woman” Willy had gone along with him, falling into a comfortable sort of friendship that made no demands on either of them. His mother had laughingly accused Willy of baby-sitting for her and it bothered neither Willy nor Richy. He was a convenient escort, and if she paid her own way—and his as well sometimes—then, what difference did it make? It was undemanding and Willy happened to know that Richy had his eye on a girl at East Carolina Univer
sity and he even went as far as to ask her advice about how to handle a relationship.

  By Saturday she was ready for a break. She had managed a trip to Hatteras to check on the new listings and found them highly desirable. They were both owned by the same Ohio couple who were worried about a gas shortage and had decided to sell them both and look for something closer to home.

  Willy opened the salt-streaked window in her one tiny bedroom, having closed it during a brief, hard thunderstorm in the night, and allowed the wind to blow in off the Atlantic. It smelled good—far better, to her way of thinking, than the exclusive atmosphere around her father’s Hobe Sound home in Florida. This was her kind of beach and she had grown fond of her inexpensive, haphazardly furnished apartment at the end of Wimble Court, despite the fact that she had grown up in a twenty-seven-room Italian-style villa on three acres of the most expensive turf on the East Coast.

  On the beach below, several dogs raced after an irascible gull and Willy laughed aloud at the frustration of the motley pack who stood at the edge of the surf and watched while their tormentor glided safely out over the gentle swells. She hadn’t been swimming in over a week, thanks to last week’s cold spell; but now, with the almost record-breaking high temperatures, the bottle-green water with its blue-white frosting along the shore was an irresistible temptation. She quickly located her favorite three-year-old bikini and within minutes was loping across the single dune that separated the small, shabby court from the Atlantic.