"Midnight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leigh Lora)

CHAPTER 16

Cami listened from her hospital bed, dry-eyed, resigned, to the sound of her father’s high, shrill voice on the other end of her aunt’s phone.

She’d warned Ella, Eddy’s wife, not to call. Cami had warned Ella that Mark could be nasty and that since moving to Aspen he had rarely wanted to speak to his daughter, let alone see her. Unless he needed her for some reason, as he had the month before, to help get her mother settled in the nursing home.

That, or to pay her mother’s bills.

She stared up at the pristine white ceiling and wondered why that searing pain was no longer there. Once, it had broken her heart that he hadn’t cared, that he refused to allow her mother to care.

But perhaps, even more painful was the fact that her mother would opt to medicate rather than stand up for the child who needed her.

“I’ll not have that damned Callahan trash dirtying my home or endangering her mother. Poor Jaymi, she’d be turning over in her grave to know the sister she thought so much of was still fucking the man that raped and murdered her.”

Cami flinched.

There was such hatred, such bitterness in his voice. Did he truly hate her so desperately for not being the child that died? For surviving when his favorite hadn’t?

Parents weren’t supposed to acknowledge favorites. If they preferred one child over the other, it was supposed to be a carefully hidden secret.

Mark had no remorse at all showing his preference for the child that died, and his belief that the wrong child had died. That he believed Cami didn’t deserve to live when Jaymi had been taken away from him.

“Mark, you’re a bastard,” Ella snapped at that point. “How Margaret ever managed to stay with you all these years I don’t know.”

She flipped the phone closed.

Cami didn’t lift her head; she couldn’t. If she had to look at the pity in her aunt’s gaze then she might not be able to bear it.

“He always was a fool, Cami-girl.”

Her head did lift then. Eddy stood a few feet from the bed, his gaze gentle. She’d rarely seen Eddy with that expression. That was his funeral face and his new-baby face. And now, it was his feel-sorry-for-Cami face.

“Rafer didn’t hurt Jaymi,” Cami said, feeling numb, wooden. “He wouldn’t have called her and warned her against himself. Just like the calls I’m getting.”

Eddy sighed heavily as he shoved his large, scarred, and beaten hands into his pant pockets. “Well, a man gets suspicious and he gets paranoid,” he said. “I’m not going to say he did do it anymore. But I won’t say he didn’t. You’re our girl, Cam. Nothin’ ain’t gonna change that and nothin’ ain’t gonna make us stop worryin’ ’bout you. Especially now.” Somber and filled with brusque emotion, Eddy sniffed uncomfortably before glancing away from her.

“A benefit of a doubt then?” she asked wearily.

He nodded slowly. “For you, girl. I know you. I know you’re damned smart, and you’re a damned good girl. That’s how Jaymi raised you but I ain’t never called you a fool. And I never called Jaymi one. And she always defended those Callahan boys. I’m not going to turn on my second-best girl just because no one else wants to agree with her.”

His second-best girl. She glanced to her aunt, dressed in her nursing scrubs, her expression somber but her gaze loving as she watched her husband. Ella was his best girl, he always said, and bemoaned often the fact that she hadn’t been able to conceive the daughter he wanted. A baby girl who looked just like his best girl.

Cami swallowed tightly. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to end up crying. No, she wouldn’t just cry, she would be sobbing, and she couldn’t afford to sob. She hated crying. It pissed her off and made her eyes sore. And her head was sore enough. She felt overwhelmed by Eddy and Ella’s anger at Mark, and the way they glanced at her, their sorrow for her aching inside them. She couldn’t seem to make them understand that it really didn’t matter anymore. She was used to her father’s disregard, as well as his judgmental hatred where her past with Rafer was concerned.

She had actually needed him when she had lost her child. Him and her mother, but that had been years before. She had learned a long time ago not to let it hurt, not to let it bother her. That was just the way it was.

“It’s okay, Uncle Eddy,” she assured him, trying to smile, but her head just hurt too bad to attempt it.

At least her face wasn’t too bruised. Thankfully, the bastard hadn’t managed to hit her but once in the face. He’d split her lip, turned one side of her face a lovely shade of blue and red. No, the majority of the damage had been the bruises caused by those heavy fists at the side of the head and the concussion the doctor had diagnosed.

Her temple was so tender that any tug at the skin there sent pulses of pain radiating through her head.

“It’s not okay.” He shook his head. “But there’s no changing him anyway.”

“Has he ever been a father to you?” Ella asked knowing he hadn’t been, as she turned away to secure the blood she had taken earlier in the small tote she carried.

Cami really didn’t want to talk about this now, and she definitely didn’t want to deal with it. She just shrugged.

“Cami knows he never was.”

Cami’s head jerked up, a whimper almost escaping as the movement sent a lance of agony twisting through her skull.

Rafe moved around her uncle, his leanly muscled, long-legged stride covering the distance until he was standing beside her, his fingers beneath her chin to lift her face.

She didn’t fight him. She didn’t have the strength. She just stared up at him, miserably aware of what he was seeing.

Her makeup was smeared, the right side of her head swollen, her face darkened with the bruise, and her lip split. She looked like she boxed for a living.

“School board contacted Archer as we drove into the hospital parking lot,” Rafe told her. “Until this is resolved, and your attacker caught, you’re on a medical leave of absence.”

In other words, they didn’t want the gossip or the small chance of danger that came with her attack.

She understood the concern, somewhat. But she hadn’t been attacked at school. She knew her students, though; they were curious and full of questions at even the busiest time of the school day. Right now, she didn’t need the questions or the knowledge that the answers would be spread among the general public.

It was the right decision for her, at this time. It just sucked to have the decision made for her.

“She needs to rest,” her aunt Ella spoke up then, her tone confrontational as she glared from Rafe to her niece. “And she’s refusing to stay here.”

Rafe slid his fingers back, allowing Cami to turn her gaze from his, thankfully. She swore she was staring death in the eye. There was such latent violence swirling in his gaze that she had to suppress a shiver.

“I’ll be fine, Aunt Ella,” she assured her.

“You’re not going home by yourself,” Cami’s uncle protested, though this time he had that tone normally reserved for his son.

“I’ll be fine.” She had no other place to run to, and she wasn’t going to her aunt and uncle’s. Cami loved them, but the thought of living with them terrified her.

“I’ll take care of her.” Rafe’s tone brooked no refusal, and as she slid him a quick look beneath her lashes she realized she was hesitating to argue back as well.

The tension that rose in the room was unmistakable.

“I said I’ll be fine—,” she began to protest again.

“Like you were this time?” Rafe growled. “Because you were too damned stubborn and ashamed to let anyone know what was going on.”

“Ashamed? Me?” She stared back at him in surprise. “I’m not ashamed, Rafe. I’m practical. Something you don’t seem to be. And I did tell you.”

“Really? You didn’t adequately explain” he argued sardonically as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her with irritating arrogance. “Practical is hiding the fact you’re getting threatening phone calls until someone actually tried to rape and murder you in your own home. Right?”

She winced before glancing quickly at her aunt and uncle. Cami swore Eddy paled before he swallowed tightly to regain his equilibrium.

“That was uncalled for.”

“It was the truth. Now, you can stay here, in this nice, sterile little room, or you can stop arguing with me and I’ll take you home. Those are your choices. Now pick one before I pick it for you.”

She so did not like being ordered around like this. If it weren’t for the headache, as well as the exhaustion, she would have argued with him.

“I want to sleep in my own bed.”

There was no way she was going to be able to sleep in a hospital bed. She loved her aunt Ella, but each time Cami had dozed off Ella had been there for blood or some other nursing reason.

Rafe gave a sharp nod of his head.

“She shouldn’t be leaving, Rafe,” Ella spoke up then. “The doctor wants her to remain until tomorrow morning for observation. A concussion is nothing to mess with, and he suspects she may have some cranial bruising.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Cami told him mutinously. “She gets paranoid.”

Ella rolled her eyes before turning back to Rafe. “Are you paying attention to me, Rafer Callahan?”

Rafe’s brows arched as Cami glanced at him, though he seemed more amused than angry.

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he assured her. “In this case, you may have to settle for a Marine medic, though.”

Ella propped one hand on her lush hip and stared back at him, suspicious. “You’re a medic?”

“No, ma’am, but I have one.” He grinned back at her. He had no intentions of telling them who the medic was or that Logan had had training that could have gotten him a job in any hospital as a physician’s assistant.

“You two just are not going to listen to reason, are you?” Ella finally griped.

“Maybe it’s a good thing, Ella,” Eddy spoke up. “I just want her safe. And this is a public hospital. If her attacker’s determined, he’ll not have too hard a time getting to her.”

Cami could see what he wasn’t saying, though. What if they were wrong and Rafe and his cousins had been the ones to have killed Jaymi and, as many believed, framed Thomas Jones?

It was in Ella’s and Eddy’s eyes and in their voices each time they spoke and in their gazes as they shared one of those speaking looks that only true soul mates shared.

Eddy was rough talking, loud, and confrontational whenever his petite wife wasn’t around. But once she was there, he went from growling lion to tame little house cat.

“Are you ready to go?” Rafe asked then. “Logan and Crowe are waiting in the hall for us.”

Cami lifted her gaze to her aunt.

“Callahan, I wanna talk to you first. You and I can walk out in the hall while Ella helps her finish getting ready and gets her signed out.” Her uncle wasn’t growling, but he wasn’t exactly the tame pussycat either.

Rafe stared across Cami’s head at the older man, seeing more than simply the command in his gaze. Eddy Flannigan was pissed off, but he wasn’t pissed off with Cami or even with Rafe this time.

Rafe gave a sharp nod before bending his head, his lips pressing the top of Cami’s head. “Be good,” he warned her. “Don’t try to run on me.”

“Rafe, if I had to run for my life right now then I think I’d probably have to just go ahead and die.”

He doubted that. According to the doctor Rafe had talked to, she had put up one hell of a fight.

“I’ll be right outside then.” He let his fingertips caress down her back before he moved away and returned to the hall, the normally verbally abusive, smart-assed Eddy following behind him.

As the door closed behind them, Eddy held up his hand quickly as both Logan and Crowe straightened from their positions on each side of the door and glared at him fiercely.

“I’m not interested in fighting you boys, yet,” he warned them.

Rafer crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at him curiously. “Then what do you want?”

“Did she tell you about the phone calls she was getting?”

Had she told Eddy? “The sheriff did,” Rafe informed the other man. “Cami hadn’t mentioned the full extent of it.”

Eddy’s shoulders sagged a little as he rubbed at the back of his neck in irritation. “Likely he heard it from the same place I did: Jack Townsend?”

Rafe nodded.

Eddy shook his head at the response or whatever thought Rafe could see darkening his gaze.

“Her aunt just got off the phone with her father,” Eddy told them then. “Normally, this ain’t no business but Flannigans’, but I saw her face, and her daddy did nothing to keep his voice low enough that it didn’t carry on the phone.” He quickly went through the conversation, ending with the final insult to Cami when Mark had called her Callahan trash.

Rafe could feel the anger building inside him now.

“What the hell happened to him?” he sighed. “Mark Flannigan was a good man once.”

Eddy snorted at that. “No, my brother, unlike me, likes to hide his faults and appear perfect in public. Me, now this is what you have.” He held his arms out to his sides as anger filled his voice. “You’re stuck with me exactly how I am. Mark, he likes to have all those pretty words said about him; he always did. And don’t get me wrong; he loved Jaymi something fierce. Her death killed a part of him, I think. But Mark was never loving with Cami, Rafe. He was never a father to her. He resented her birth and he resented every time he had to balance buying for her with buying for Jaymi. Every time Jaymi had to share something, or couldn’t have something, he blamed Cami’s birth. The day of Jaymi’s funeral he stated it was unfair that his Jaymi was gone, that she had suffered. If one of them had to die like that—” Eddy seemed to shudder as he blinked back a sudden moisture in his eyes. “He said it should have been Cami.” Eddy lifted his gaze as Rafe fought to hide the horror that a father could ever say or do anything so atrocious. “And she overheard him.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Like I said, this should stay Flannigan business.” He glared at Rafe as though it were his fault the story was coming out. “But that girl has enough on her shoulders right now; hearing her daddy call her trash wasn’t something she needed. One of these days, she’s going to accept to her soul that she doesn’t have a daddy, and when she does, if you’re there—” He broke off as though uncomfortable.

“There’s no if about it,” Rafe assured him. “I’ll be there, and I’ll take care of her.”

Eddy nodded sharply.

“Tell me something, Eddy. All these years you’ve poked and prodded and sliced at us with that smart-assed mouth of yours, and not even for a minute did you believe we hurt Jaymi. Why did you do it?”

“Who says I didn’t?” Eddy frowned, his gaze fierce and confrontational as he stared back at them.

“Because you would have never told me any of that if you thought for a moment one of us hurt her sister,” Rafe snarled back at, Eddy, his voice low but the fury raging in it loud and clear.

“And I would have never treated you any different even if your names hadn’t come up in her death.” Eddy was in Rafe’s face, glaring, his entire demeanor one of defensive anger. “You were arrogant little shits as kids who slapped away every helping hand extended to you. You only slap my hand once, Callahan. And count yourself lucky, because of that girl in there.” Eddy’s finger stabbed toward the hospital room door. “Because of that girl, you’re getting another chance. See if you can be appreciative this time.”

The man had lost his mind. “When did you ever extend a hand to any of us?” Rafe bit out in disbelief. “You stood with the rest of this county every damned time they wanted to accuse us of something.”

“And you made it so damned easy, didn’t you?” Eddy settled back on his heels with a tough, mocking smile. Like a banty rooster standing in challenge. “You little shits. You were ten.” He looked at Rafe. “Twelve.” His gaze met Logan’s. “And thirteen.” He inclined his head to Crowe. “And that damned chip on your shoulder was bigger than each of you were. I offered you a ride to school one morning.” He stared at Rafe expectantly, his look withering.

It was Crowe who nodded slowly. “It was snowing and damned cold,” he murmured, his golden-brown eyes sharp, intent. “You were driving that beat-up old four-wheel drive of your brother’s.”

And Rafe remembered it then.

“You saw me, not Mark,” Eddy growled, his gaze suddenly brooding rather than confrontational.

Crowe shook his head. “I saw Mark Flannigan, and I saw the day before as he came around that curve you drove around that morning. He came around it so fast that if Logan hadn’t jumped for the ditch he would have run him over. And he didn’t even stop to make sure he was okay.”

“That was the winter after our parents died,” Logan said quietly. “I don’t remember much of that year. Except that lawyer Rafe’s uncle got us to keep the Raffertys and the Corbins from stealing the inheritances our mothers left us.”

For a second, abject regret filled Eddy’s eyes. Remorse and shame flashed in his gaze before he hurriedly jerked his eyes away. When he turned back, it was with a sense of resignation and acceptance, though the remorse was still a heavy presence in his expression.

Eddy backed down. “Hell, I’m who I am,” he stated, obviously making the connection that what he had seen as childish arrogance had been lingering shock and grief. “An asshole on a good day, but I’m not stupid.” He turned to Rafe. “Jaymi and Cami both have defended you, against everything and everyone. When you were arrested for Jaymi’s murder, Cami just about went crazy. She swore every day you didn’t do it. She would sit up at night forming arguments for your lawyer, she said.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “God help me if I’m wrong.” He turned his head, his gaze tormented now. “But that’s mine and Ella’s girl. We’ve done what we can to teach her to be smart, and to know her own mind. And she’s damned certain you’re a good man. And I’m damned certain I know every crime you’ve been accused of you weren’t anywhere around when it happened, except Jaymi’s death. And she wasn’t the only innocent young woman that died that summer.”

It didn’t make up for the years of the man’s confrontational insults and jeering attitude. But one thing Rafe could say in Eddy’s defense: he was one of the few who hadn’t called the cousins rapists and murderers to their faces, or behind their backs as far as Rafe knew.

Eddy was mocking, snide, sarcastic, and those were his good days, but he wasn’t cruel, and he had never gone out of his way to be mocking, snide, and sarcastic either. It was simply what you found when you found Eddy.

The sound of the door opening drew all their attention, and Rafe had to force back a growl of fury at the timid, cautious pace of each step and the proof that the blows to Cami’s body hadn’t been made as a warning. The attack had been meant to be deadly.

“Get a wheelchair!” he snapped to Logan, turning, only to see Crowe jerking one from the nurses’ station and wheeling it to her.

“Sit, baby.” It was an order, cloaked in silk, she thought as she hid a smile and sat down gingerly in the chair.

The bruise on her hip from stumbling on the stairs was actually the worst of the it. Well, except for the bruise the doctor said her skull might have.

It wasn’t so bruised that she wasn’t well aware of the fact that Rafe was in command mode.

Which was really rather amusing. Why bother to hide it now with that dark, husky male tenderness? It was like throwing a tablecloth over the elephant in the living room, she thought, struggling not to grin.

“I see that grin tugging at your lips,” he told her as he moved behind her and leaned close, his lips at her ear. “What’s so funny?”

She wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole.

“So much for saving you from any more trouble,” she sighed instead. “I was hoping to avoid this for you, Rafe.”

“Trying to protect me, were you?” he asked as he knelt beside the chair, reached up, and brushed her hair back from her cheek.

Cami was tempted to close her eyes at the stroke of pleasure against her flesh, the warmth and calloused rasp of his fingertips against her skin.

“Maybe I was trying to protect us both.”

“Cami, I’ll be at the house this evening with your prescriptions and to check you out.” Ella moved from the room, her voice brisk and no-nonsense, her expression fierce as she moved in front of Cami.

Ella was all but glaring at Rafe as he came to his feet. “I will be keeping a check on her, Rafe Callahan.”

Cami watched her aunt in confusion. She had never known her aunt and uncle to be so protective. Well, perhaps that wasn’t particularly true. Since her parents’ move to Aspen four years ago, Cami’s aunt and uncle had seemed to take more of an interest by the month in her.

“I understand, Aunt Ella,” she promised.

Ella’s gaze flicked to Rafe. “You take care of her, or you’ll deal with me and Eddy, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “We should go now. I’d like to get her home and get her settled in.”

Ella leaned down, hugged her gently. “Call me if you need me,” she whispered.

“I will. I promise.”

As Ella moved back, Cami’s uncle took her place. He touched the side of her gently, a facsimile of his normal firm grip, and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be by with Ella,” he promised. “Just let me know if you need me.”

“I’m going to be fine. You two act like I’m going away forever or something,” she chided them both softly.

They invited her to dinner, to the movies, to their Sunday drives when they were both off work together. And it was something Cami realized she sometimes forgot.

She wasn’t totally alone; she never had been. She had always had Eddy and Ella.

But they weren’t her parents; they had their own family. Cami always felt on the outside looking in, and that had made her feel even lonelier. She hadn’t just felt as though she were on the outside looking in; she had been.

It wasn’t their fault. It was hers and perhaps, in some ways, her parents’.

Giving her aunt and uncle a final quick hug, Cami allowed Rafe to wheel her to the elevator where he, Logan, and Crowe crowded around her. The doors were closing before she realized something.

“They never believed you hurt Jaymi,” she murmured, frowning at the doors as the elevator moved slowly to the lobby floor. “They couldn’t have, or they wouldn’t have let you leave with me so easily.”

She didn’t look at Rafe, but she heard his grunt, mocking, disbelieving.

She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Rafe.” Eyes narrowed, she glanced up to where he stood at her side. “If they even suspected at the time that you had hurt Jaymi, they would have been going crazy over me leaving with you.” It didn’t make sense. “Why would Uncle act as though he believed it, if he didn’t?”

“Because he’s an ass,” Rafe grunted.

“Because, like everyone else in Corbin County, he believed if our mothers hadn’t married Callahans then they wouldn’t have died,” Crowe answered for him. “Kim Corbin, Mina Rafferty, and Ann Ramsey weren’t just best friends and the daughters of the most financially successful families on this side of the mountain; they were also very well loved by everyone in the county. So much so that during those years before they they died in that wreck those who did love them were actually giving the Callahan brothers a chance.”

“What chance?” Cami asked as the elevator door slid to a stop. “The last I heard they were reviled before and after they married their wives.”

Crowe shook his head as Rafe stopped at the passenger side of the truck and she stared up at him in confusion.

“You don’t know?” he asked as he stared down at her.

“Know what?”

“Because of Kim Corbin, Ann Ramsey, and Mina Rafferty they were beginning a future, Cami. In those few short years, the Callahans were doing something no one else had accomplished. They had actually found an investor for a resort in Corbin County that had all the earmarks of success. They were doing something the Raffertys and Corbins had nearly bankrupted themselves attempting to accomplish more than once. When they died, everyone in this county who was counting on that resort lost that dream. And they had only one way to punish the men who failed them.”

“Through their children.”

He inclined his head slowly, resigned. “Their children.”