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

CHAPTER 18

Having three men in her small house wasn’t Cami’s idea of peace and relaxation. Two days later, as she moved down the stairs, pushing back the memory of her desperate flight the night she was attacked, she came to a slow stop at the bottom of the stairs.

Leaning against the curved banister, she stared at the floor of her living room where, sleeping-bag-encased, Logan and Crowe slept in positions that would block all access to the stairs.

There was no way in hell to get from the kitchen to the stairs or from the stairs to the kitchen, where her coffeepot awaited.

“Just tell them to move their sorry asses,” Rafe said lightly as he bounded down the stairs behind her rather than walking softly as she had.

“They’re sleeping.” She frowned up at him, not entirely agreeing with the command.

“They were, until Lard Ass stomped down the stairs,” Crowe groused as he rolled over in the sleeping bag and jerked the extra-down-filled material over his head.

It wasn’t exactly cold, but a fire would have been nice. Before she’d acquired three grown male bodyguards, she would have had the fire ready to light and the coffee set to have already been made.

She held back the sigh that would have slipped past her lips and looked at the clock.

Before she had acquired her bodyguards, she would have had a job to go to. The fire would have waited until evening, and then it would have been a nice glass of wine rather than coffee as she graded papers.

She was going to have to call the principal, though her Uncle Eddy had promised to talk to his other niece himself. Serena Carlyle was Ella’s sister’s daughter and had taken the post of principal the year before when the previous principal had retired.

A resident of Aspen, Serena wasn’t influenced by the barons though. Thank God!

“Someone needs to make coffee,” Logan grumbled from somewhere inside his sleeping bag.

“Get your lazy ass up,” Rafe ordered as he stepped into the living room and began stepping over the bodies. “We have a busy day ahead of us.”

“And what is ahead of you that’s going to be so busy?” Cami asked as she followed behind him, albeit picking her way through the living room more slowly.

She was still incredibly tender, her hip was still one large bruise, and though the headaches weren’t as severe or as often as they had been at first, they were still prone to hit and last for hours at a time.

The bruising to her skull could have resulted in much, much more serious complications. Thankfully, the initial concussion and disorientation was the worst she had suffered.

She could have returned to work, though she admitted it wouldn’t have been easy. Cami was guessing she could look forward to spending the rest of the school year out on leave and when the new fall season began she doubted she would have a job.

Moving to Aspen was out of the question, she thought as she stepped into the kitchen, greeted by the tempting scent of coffee beginning.

“And what are you doing today that’s going to be so busy?” she asked as she pulled the edges of the gray sweater she wore snugly around the white cotton shirt she had tucked into her jeans.

“We have a few errands to run,” Rafe told her as he moved to the cabinets and, as he had the day before, began preparing breakfast.

They never asked her to fix breakfast, though Rafe had acted like a kid in a candy store the morning she had cooked during their snowbound adventure.

“Logan and I have to check the ranch and my house before meeting you and Rafe at the courthouse,” Crowe finished as he too stepped into the kitchen.

“Meeting us at the courthouse?” She arched a brow as she looked over to where Rafe was loading one of her larger skillets with bacon. “And why are we going to the courthouse?”

“My lawyer and I have a meeting with the county attorney to discuss Deputy Eisner and his lack of talent in navigating private drives with a piece of county equipment.”

She almost winced. “You’ve sued the county?”

“Not yet.” Rafe flashed her a grin over his shoulder before turning back to the two pounds of bacon Logan had brought in the day before. “That’s what we’re discussing.”

Cami lowered her head, shaking it at the impossible sense of fun that seemed to fill Rafe’s face.

“You know this is insane, right?” she accused him. “Rafe, suing the county is only going to piss more people off.”

“Fuck ’em,” Logan drawled as he moved plates from the cabinet and handed them to Rafe before taking Cami’s cup from her hand and filling it with coffee. “You’re probably the only one in this county that likes us anyway.”

“Who says I like you?” She arched her brow, hiding the fact that she did like him.

She had always liked the Callahan cousins, even when she was younger. Especially when she was younger, when the cousins had been like fables, larger than life and used as a bogeyman threat against little children who refused to behave.

Logan pouted good-naturedly as Crowe grunted at the response. She noticed he did that a lot. He didn’t talk much, but he watched, listened, and he waited. There was always a sense of waiting where Crowe was concerned, as though he knew something was about to happen and was determined to be prepared.

“So I have to go to this meeting why?” She turned back to Rafe as he moved to the refrigerator and pulled a dozen eggs from the inside.

He flicked her a look that assured her he meant for her to go, one way or the other.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, cocked a hip, and tapped her toe against the floor twice as she waited.

“Ignoring me isn’t going to get you your way automatically,” she assured him as he returned to the sizzling bacon. “I have things to do today myself.”

“And I have no intentions of leaving you here alone,” he informed her, his tone hardening. “And I can’t miss this meeting. Eisner deliberately took that fence out, and he was too damned gleeful about the results to suit me; now he’s going to pay for it.”

“And you don’t think it would be a good time to take the high road and let it go?” she asked him. “Give it a rest, Rafe. No one is going to care if Deputy Eisner is fired or not, except Eisner. But what they will do is come together against you, rather than for him.”

Rafe shrugged. “Good luck to them.”

She turned to Crowe, wondering if, as the oldest cousin, he would at least show a bit more maturity.

“You should stay out of this one,” he told her instead, his darker voice rumbling more than usual. “Let Eisner pay for his sins. He’s quick enough to attempt to make others pay for sins that aren’t theirs.”

“Stay out of it?” She let her brows arch in amused disbelief. “There’s not the first one of you that could possibly keep your nose out of my business at this point, and you have the nerve to tell me to keep mine out of a part of yours? Or his?” She nodded to Rafe. “Not as long as he’s sleeping in my bed I won’t.”

Rafe had to turn back to the sizzling bacon to hide the grin tugging at his lips as Cami turned that teacher’s attitude on Crowe without a thought.

There were very few people Rafe had ever known who were willing to stand and stare at his older cousin as though he were a mischievous schoolboy stepping out of line.

“I’m not sleeping in your bed, though,” he pointed out.

“No, you’re sleeping on my living room floor,” she retorted with false sweetness. “If you don’t like my opinion, then you’re more than welcome to sleep in the backyard.”

Logan’s snort of laughter was followed by another of Crowe’s less than impressed male grunts.

“The backyard is probably more comfortable,” Crowe informed her. “Unfortunately, not as secure.”

“Yeah, like someone’s going to get past Rafe while he’s pacing the bedroom floor,” she stated.

Rafe arched his brows at the acidic little comment. He had no idea she was aware of the fact that sleep was often a long time coming for him.

He wasn’t exactly pacing the bedroom floor, though. That would have been counterproductive. More often than not he was standing by the bedroom window, silent, still, and watching the shadowed edge of her back garden carefully.

Crowe had managed to pinpoint the location where her attacker had come into her yard and slipped into the window well that hadn’t been as secure as it should have been.

There had been no prints, just as Archer said there hadn’t been. But what Crowe had found was that the back door lock had been broken from the inside, not the outside. Someone hadn’t wanted it known that the basement had been used for the entrance point into the house. That window had been opened from the inside as well, not from the outside.

Someone she had trusted had opened that window.

Crowe had locked it back, and now the cousins were going to see about giving that someone a chance to slip in and unlock it again.

That meant getting her out of the house without it appearing as though he had deliberately gotten her out of the house. The meeting was the perfect opportunity for that.

Besides that, he knew for a fact that the county attorney, Wayne Sorenson, would have a much harder time playing the bastard with Cami sitting there watching him.

Cami and Wayne Sorenson’s daughter, Amelia, had been best friends. They had practically grown up in the same house. Amelia’s mother had been best friends with Cami’s mother, and the two girls had been inseparable as children and young adults.

Wayne and Mark hadn’t associated with each other much, though. Wayne had been younger and hadn’t seemed to connect with Mark’s aloof bigotry.

“It may not be a good idea to take me to that meeting with you, Rafe,” Cami advised him as the last of the breakfast dishes were cleared away more than an hour later.

She was still limping a bit, the bruise on her hip obviously bothering her as she shifted in her chair again, accepting the cup of coffee Logan reached to her as Crowe finished loading the dishwasher.

She had watched them as though they were aliens as they cleaned her kitchen. Or as though she had expected them to leave the mess for her.

“And why is that?” Rafe asked as he rinsed the skillet he’d used to prepare the meal and turned back to her.

Drying his hands, he watched her as she nibbled at her thumbnail, a concerned expression on her face as she watched him.

“Wayne’s not exactly enamored of me any longer,” she finally sighed. “And Amelia and I haven’t spoken in ages.”

There was a shadow of hurt in Cami’s gaze before she looked down at her coffee, but there was also a shadow of deception in her eyes. She was hiding more half-truths and shadows of lies than Rafe could have ever guessed.

What the hell had happened to her since he had been gone?

Rafe glanced at his cousins in a silent exchange that had the other two men making their excuses and leaving the kitchen. Several minutes later the sound of the front door clicking shut had her head lifting once again. She was obviously surprised that the other two had left the room and she was now alone with Rafe.

And she didn’t look comfortable with him.

What the hell did it take, he wondered, for her to get a clue that she was stuck with him?

“Why haven’t you and Amelia spoken for the past few years?” he finally asked Cami.

She breathed out heavily as her shoulders lifted in an uncomfortable, defensive little gesture more telling than words.

“Things happen.” She shrugged. “It began before we graduated college. That last year actually. I started work as a substitute and Amelia already had an offer for her own classroom in Aspen for a while.” Cami smiled at something that she obviously still found to be a pleasant memory before rubbing at the side of her neck a bit nervously. “Something changed that year, I guess. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop her from disassociating herself from me.”

Rafe knew she had been twenty-two that year. She and Amelia had roomed together at college and watched out for each other as they navigated the much larger city after being raised in near isolation in Sweetrock. It didn’t make sense that they would have just grown apart.

“There’s more to it, Cami,” he probed. “The half-truths are only going to piss me off. Now tell me what the hell happened before I have to begin questioning others. You don’t want to push this much further.”

Her lips thinned as a flash of anger clouded her eyes. She glanced away from him for a second, obviously searching for some other way to get out of answering the question.

Rafe stalked to the table, planted his hand on the top of it, and leaned close as she stared back at him in surprise, her eyes widening as he leaned in, nearly nose to nose with her.

“I asked you a question,” he growled furiously as he felt that primal instinct itching between his shoulder blades again. The secrets she was keeping had somehow contributed to the isolated, near-friendless life she was living at the moment.

“Lie to me and I’ll paddle your ass.”

Delicate little nostrils flared. “Perhaps I’ll like it,” she snapped back. “Go ahead and try it, Rafer.”

“Oh, you’ll like it,” he promised her as he came in closer. “You’ll love it, Cami. You’ll beg for it. Your pussy will become so hot, so wet, so desperate for release that you’ll beg me to fuck you. You’ll beg for my cock as deep and as hard as you can take me.”

Her face flushed, her eyes darkened.

“And I’ll even give it to you,” he promised, dropping his voice until he knew the lower, rougher tone would take on a brooding, rasping quality that never failed to affect her.

And it did.

Her face flushed, arousal heating her cheeks at the very sensual promise.

“And that’s supposed to convince me—”

“Do you know what that does to a woman, Cami?” he whispered. “You don’t see yourself as submissive. You’re an independent, freethinking woman. But once you’ve come until you can come no more, once you think it’s all you can do to breathe, once you think it’s over.” His voice dropped further. “I’ll do it again, Cami. And I’ll do it again. And when it’s over, when it’s all you can do just to breathe, what you’ll realize is what will sear you to your very soul. You’ll realize I didn’t just spill my come inside you so many times, pumping it as deep inside you as possible. You’ll realize I own you. Heart and soul. You’ll be completely mine, Cami, and you’ll love being mine. You’ll ache for more of it. You’ll come to me when I so much as whisper your name, because I’ll be buried so deeply inside your soul that you won’t be able to cut me out. There will be no forcing me out. Is that what you want now? Is that a step you think you’re ready to take at this moment?”

It was a step she had already taken and one she that had nearly destroyed her. Those horrible, bleak days were still a part of her, still a part of her memories, and the scars were still a part of her soul.

It would destroy her to belong to him so completely again. And she couldn’t risk his attempt to do just as he said he would, because he could. She was too weak where his touch, his kiss, was concerned. Too weak, too hungry. He was already too much a part of her.

“Now, I’m going to ask you again, kitten. What happened?”

She swallowed tightly. “Amelia used to keep a diary,” she whispered, her gaze lifting to him as the anger faded from her gray eyes and they darkened in pain instead.

He eased back slowly. “And someone found it?”

Cami drew in a slow, deep breath. “It wouldn’t be hard to guess. Her father did while helping Amelia move the year we graduated. He learned both our secrets.”

“And what were those secrets?” It was worth a try.

Cami shook her head, stubborn determination smoothing all but the final, last vestiges of emotion. “It’s her secret,” Cami whispered. “I’ll never betray her, not in any way.”

“She betrayed you, evidently.”

Cami only shrugged.

“And what did he learn of your secrets?” Rafe asked her instead.

“He learned of the night we had spent together and how I felt about it.” She licked her lips nervously. “How I felt about you. And while he was being nosy, he learned something Amelia had fought to hide from him. After that night, she never spoke to me again.”

That secret must have been a huge one. If Rafe remembered correctly, there was some sort of gossip surrounding her return and the hasty marriage that took place weeks later.

“She’s married now, isn’t she?” he asked to be certain.

“She’s married,” Cami agreed.

“And how did Wayne handle these secrets?”

Her lips quirked bitterly. “He was very disappointed in both of us, he said. And he was, but I really didn’t give a damn. Shame wasn’t the reason I didn’t tell anyone, and shame has never been the reason I didn’t want anyone to know we were lovers.”

She rose slowly from her chair.

She felt as though she had aged ten years. As though exhaustion were so much a part of her now that there would never be any shaking it off.

“Cami.” He moved to touch her, to draw her into his arms, to give her what little comfort he could.

Her hand lifted imperatively, a demand that he stop as he watched a hard shudder shake her body.

“I don’t have friends for a reason,” she whispered. “I don’t have my parents for a reason.” She lifted her gaze to him and it didn’t take a frigging diary to see the pain that filled her eyes. “Because you never had to fuck me all night long, spank me, or make yourself so much a part of me that I couldn’t exist without you, or without that part that I’ll suddenly be living and breathing for.”

He heard the tears then. They didn’t fall. They didn’t fill her eyes. They were stuck in her soul, a wound that never healed, that never eased. And it broke his heart.

“Cami?” What could have happened? How could he have hurt her in such a way without ever knowing he had done so? Fear lanced through him then. Fear that somehow he had damaged her, taken from her something she hadn’t willingly given because his hunger had been so strong, so wild.

“You did the night we spent together.” He froze at the statement. “You left a part of yourself inside me that I never wanted to be free of. That I never wanted to live without.” Her voice was ragged now, torn, until he moved for her, desperate to hold her as she jerked back from him, leaving him staring at her in shock as her expression twisted in rage. “And I lost it anyway, Rafe. I lost the baby I already loved until it felt as though my soul had been seared and then ripped from my very spirit. But I was still living, I was still breathing, and I was alone. And I’ve stayed alone. That way, I didn’t lose again. I didn’t suffer again. And I sure as hell didn’t ever take that risk again until I decided to see if rumors were true and drive by the ranch.” Her breathing hitched as she held her hands to her stomach, the rage and anger in her voice ripping his soul apart. The image of complete aloneness that surrounded her, tearing into his soul. Cami should have never been alone. “Until I walked to your house during a blizzard, instead of the Phillipses’, which was closer. Until I realized I had to see you.” And there were the tears; they gleamed in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “I had to see you; I had to know if you were really home. If you were really here. And I swore I wouldn’t touch you.” Throwing her head back, she blinked desperately as she drew in ragged breaths. “I just had to see you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Now what else do you want to know, Rafe? Tell me!” she screamed then, the pain suddenly overflowing, penned up for five years, locked in a dark part of her soul where she had refused to let it escape, and now it was exploding like a volcano of rage and pain. “What the fuck else do you need to know?”

She turned to run.

Cami had never meant to let it go, to let it rise inside her until it spewed from her soul like an erupting volcano that couldn’t be stemmed.

When he had threatened to leave a part of himself that she would never be free of, he had triggered that inner helpless rage she had been able to control in the past.

“The hell you will!” Rafe jumped for her as she turned to run, to escape. “Damn you, you’re not going anywhere. You will not run from me again, Cambria. Not this time. Not now.”

He had seen the intent in her eyes, wild with the agony of a loss he had never known.

Catching her around the waist, he was only distantly aware of Logan and Crowe rushing back into the house from the front porch. Coming to a stop in the hall, they watched, surprised, not prepared as a desperate cry of agony tore from her and her arm swung with all the force in her small, delicate body.

Rafe caught her fist a bare inch from his face, staring back at her in surprise, in anger. She dared to try to strike him, even in her pain, in her rage against fate, when she hadn’t told him that together they had created a life? That she had lost that baby and suffered that loss alone and had never given him the chance to share it with her?

“You never told me,” he snarled down at her. “You were pregnant and you never told me? Why?” As he gripped her upper arms it was all he could do not to shake her, to demand, to rage along with her for the tiny unborn life he had never had the chance to know about.

The tears fell now. Staring back at him, her eyes were nearly black with the emotions, the secrets she had kept for far too long, and the tears he wondered if she had ever shed.

Jaymi had remarked several times that Cami held too much inside, even as a child. That Jaymi never knew what her sister was thinking or what Cami was doing until it was already done.

“Dad said I deserved it,” she whispered as those tears fell from her eyes, her lips trembling violently as she stared up at Rafe beseechingly. “Mom said it was for the best. That I wouldn’t want my child to suffer as you and your cousins did.” Her fingers clutched at his arms now with the same desperation that her fist had aimed for his face with. “It wasn’t for the best, Rafe. I wouldn’t have let my baby suffer. I would never, ever let anyone be cruel to my child.” Hoarse, rough with the tears that fell but the sobs she held back, her voice grated with pain and tore a hole in his soul.

“Cami. I would have been here.” How had it happened? He had used a condom. He remembered using a condom. Had it broken? Had he only thought he had rolled the latex over the violently hard flesh that was so eager to sink inside her?

She shook her head as though she had read his thoughts. “It was my fault.” She swallowed tightly. “You had drunk so much that night. After I fell asleep you woke me. You asked if it was okay. You asked if you could have me bare.” Her breathing hitched, those sobs fighting to be free. “I told you it was,” her voice lowered. “I told you it was, and I knew it could happen. I knew, and I wanted—”

She gave a hard shake of her head, lowering it and fighting to be free again.

“You wanted my baby?” he asked, baffled, as she struggled to escape. “No, Cami.” A small shake was acceptable, he told himself. Just enough to get her attention. Just enough to make her look up at him, those tears still falling, her lips trembling with such vulnerable pain it was destroying him. “You wanted my baby?”

Every woman he had ever been with in Corbin County had been damned vigilant about condoms and birth control. Not that he had been any less so. He had been determined no child of his would be raised away from his protection, and he knew no woman in that county would want to claim him as the father.

Except Cami.

“I wanted our baby,” she whispered. “I wanted a part of you to hold forever, because you were always leaving, Rafe. You couldn’t stay and I wanted to hold on to you forever because leaving before you awoke, so I wouldn’t have to watch you leave, nearly killed me.”

She couldn’t let the sobs free. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry, to release the rage and pain building inside her, because she feared the price.

If she shattered, she might not know how to put herself back together again.

“Let me go.” If he kept holding her, kept staring at her with that naked hunger, then she might not survive it. “Don’t tear at me anymore, Rafe, please. Please don’t ask any more from me. Please God, don’t ask me for more.”

Let her go? It wasn’t happening and now wasn’t the time to tell her that was something he would never do. What she definitely didn’t know was that he had never let her go.

“I won’t leave you alone.” He had to force himself to speak past the lump in his throat.

As he stared down at her he was only barely aware of the doorbell ringing.

The door opened before Logan or Crowe could reach it and check for danger. Cami wished they had made it.

The danger wasn’t physical, it was so much more dangerous than that.

Stepping into the small den her father had once used, Cami could feel her insides tightening in trepidation as she faced her father.

She really looked nothing like him.

She remembered so many times, staring at him and wondering how she had acquired traits and a sense of decency that she knew he didn’t have.

“Is Mother doing well?” she asked as he moved naturally to the large desk she had taken as her own.

He sat down in the large padded chair comfortably and stared back at her.

Cami knew this wasn’t going to go well.

It never had whenever she had faced him across the table in the past.

His lips were curled into a sneer, his brown eyes filled with disgust.

I see the rumors are true,” he mocked her, his tone low. “You’ve not only insisted in fucking the murderers but you have them living with you.” His gaze flicked over her. “Are you fucking all of them?”

“Is it any of your business?” she asked him.

His lip curled tighter. “You’ve managed to get my Jaymi killed and now you’ve also turned my brother against me.”

“I had nothing to do with Jaymi’s murder.” She was already too raw, too shredded inside to take the blame for it.

He leaned forward against the desk. “She died for you,” he accused her. “To collect medicine you begged her for.” He raked her with a look filled with bitter hatred. “You could have waited until the next morning.”

She couldn’t deal with this.

She was savaged from the secrets she had revealed to Rafe, the memories raking her soul as the hatred in his gaze seemed to increase. “You lost your child, Cami, and I thought it only fitting punishment.”

Vicious, cruel, the sound of the satisfaction in his tone shocked her.

“Why?” she whispered painfully, shocked. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

“Because you deserved it.” He rose from the chair then, glaring back at her. “You took Jaymi from the parents who loved her, and you thought your presence would help with that loss?”

“I thought you had a spark of decency was what I believed,” she whispered painfully. “I learned you didn’t a long time ago, though. And it was no more than the truth.”

The cold hard smile he directed her way should have hurt her. It should have at least hurt for the simple fact that he was her father.

“Why should I?” he asked, his voice dropping further to ensure Rafe didn’t hear them, she suspected. “You weren’t my child, Cami. You’re nothing to me. So why should I care?”

It didn’t hurt, that was the first thing she noticed. The bitterness was there. The pain was there, but Cami found herself unable to care about that either.

She stared back at him, wondering though if Jami had known …

“That’s enough.”

Cami swung around as Rafe pushed the door opened and stepped inside.

He stood tall, broad, strong.

And Cami could feel the emotions tearing free inside her then.

“Bastard,” Mark Flannigan growled insultingly. “You have no say here.”

“No, I do.” Cami swung around then and this time, she let her gaze rake over him in satisfaction. “You haven’t hurt me, Mark. You didn’t even surprise me. You have no idea how proud I am that you are no father of mine.”

His brows lowered furiously as his hands fisted at his side.

“It’s time you left,” she told him. “Leave now, and don’t bother coming back. Because you’re not wanted any more than you ever wanted me.”