First Impressions

first stab of pain. No, it couldn’t be, he would have told her. Vance loved her. He wouldn’t lie or pretend. He wouldn’t make a fool of her by letting her think he was out of work when he was the head of one of the biggest construction firms in the country. He wouldn’t have said he loved her without telling her who he really was.
His first wife.
Shane heard a soft, despairing moan without realizing it was hers.
    When she saw him coming down the path, she stared blankly. As she watched him, her whirling thoughts came to a sudden halt. She knew then she’d been a fool.
    Spotting her, Vance smiled in greeting and increased his pace. He was still several yards away when he recognized the expression on her face. It was the same stricken look he’d seen in the moonlight only a few nights before.
    “Shane?” He came to her quickly, reaching for her. Shane stepped back.
    “Liar,” she said in a broken whisper. “All lies.” Her eyes both accused and pleaded. “Everything you said.”
    “Shane—”
    “No, don’t!” The panic in her voice was enough to halt the hand he held out to her. He knew that somehow she had learned everything before he could tell her himself.
    “Shane, let me explain.”
    “Explain?” She dragged shaking fingers through her hair. “Explain? How? How can you explain why you let me think you were something you’re not? How can you explain why you didn’t bother to tell me you were president of Riverton, that you—that you’d been married before? I
trusted
you,” she whispered. “God, how could I have been such a fool!”
    Anger he could have met and handled. Vance faced despair without any notion of how to cope with it. Impotently he thrust his hands into his pockets to keep from touching her. “I would have told you, Shane. I intended—”
    “
Would have?
” She gave a quick, shaky laugh. “When? After you’d gotten bored with the joke?”
    “There was never any joke,” he said furiously, then clamped down on his panic. “I wanted to tell you, but every time—”
    “No joke?” Her eyes glittered now with the beginnings of anger, the beginnings of tears. “You let me give you a job. You let me pay you six dollars an hour, and you don’t think that’s funny?”
    “I didn’t want your money, Shane. I tried to tell you. You wouldn’t listen.” Frustrated, he turned away until he had himself under control. “I banked the checks in an account under your name.”
    “How dare you!” Wild with pain, she shouted at him, blind and deaf to everything but the sense of betrayal. “How dare you play games with me!
I believed you.
I believed everything. I thought—I thought I was helping you, and all the time you were laughing at me.”
    “Damn it, Shane, I never laughed at you.” Pushed beyond endurance, he grabbed her shoulders. “You know I never laughed at you.”
    “I wonder how you managed not to laugh in my face. God, you’re clever, Vance.” She choked on a sob, then swallowed it.
    “Shane, if you’d try to understand why I came, why I didn’t want to be connected with the company for a little while . . .” None of the words he needed would come to him. “It had nothing to do with you,” he told her fiercely. “I didn’t expect to get involved.”
    “Did it keep you from being bored?” she demanded, struggling against his hold. “Amusing yourself with a stupid little country girl who was so gullible she’d believe anything you said? You could play the poor working man and be entertained.”
    “It was never like that.” Enraged by the words, he shook her. “You don’t really believe that.”
    The tears gushed out passionately, strangling her voice. “And I was so willing to fall into bed with you. You knew it!” She sobbed, pushing desperately at him. “Right from the first I had no secrets from you.”
    “I had them,” he admitted in a tight voice. “I had reasons for them.”
    “You knew how much I loved you, how much I wanted you. You
used
me!” On a moan, she covered her face with her hands. “Oh God, I left myself wide open.”
    She wept with the same honest abandon he’d seen when she laughed. Unable to do otherwise, he crushed her against him. He thought if he could only calm her down, he could make her understand. “Shane, please, you have to listen to me.”
    “No, no, I don’t.” She pulled in breath after jerky breath as she struggled for release. “I’ll never forgive you. I’ll never believe anything you