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

CHAPTER 5

She slept peacefully, deeply, her head resting against his heart as her deep, even breaths feathered over the light dusting of hair on his chest.

Rafe kept his arm curled around her shoulders, kept her as close to his body as he could get her, allowing his fingers to stroke the silk of her hair every so often.

He’d waited years to get her here, and now that she was, rather than sleeping as peacefully as he had that first time with her, Rafe was left staring into the darkness of the bedroom.

He was damned wary about going to sleep and he fully admitted why. Every time he had done so, he had wakened to a missing Cami and an empty bed. Not even so much as a letter or a short good-bye written in lipstick on the hotel mirror.

If she ran out on him again in such a way, he’d end up doing more than busting a hole in a hotel wall with his fist. Rafe would go looking for her, and that might be the worst idea he’d had in years. He could just imagine the shock, the fear, and the suspicion that would fill her neighbors’ faces if he did such a thing.

She would probably have every male within three blocks in front of her home within minutes, and every one of them would be armed. Every one of them would have murder in his heart and hatred in his gaze, and Rafe had never fully understood that. Because it had begun long before the year six young women had died at the hands of a brutal rapist and torturing murderer.

Cami’s older sister, Jaymi, had been one of the victims.

For a second, he heard her screams as clearly as he, Logan, and Crowe had heard them that hot summer night they had been quietly fishing on the bank of Sweetrock Lake, in the densely covered forest outside of town.

He didn’t want to remember that night. He’d spent too many years trying to forget it. But the facts were that the Callahans had been ostracized far sooner than that year. They’d been ostracized decades before that, and there had been no explanation why.

There had only been that barely disguised distrust and wariness, as well the thinly veiled dislike.

There had been days Rafer had existed in such a state of rage during his teenage years that even his Uncle Clyde had been wary of him. Hell, even his cousins had steered a wide path around him in those days.

He reminded himself that he hadn’t allowed their opinions to bother him since then though and he wouldn’t allow them to matter now. Never again would he allow such destructive fury to rise inside of him because of such pettiness and never again would he run from it.

But it would matter to Cami and he couldn’t even blame her for it. There were times when he had been able to view the situation logically. Had he believed a man responsible for such heinous crimes, he then too would have gone out of his way to make his life hell.

And even before the murders, the years he and his cousins had endured the scorn of the citizens of Corbin County, he’d understood, sort of, why they had done so.

The barons of Corbin County were a powerful force in not just the county, but also in the state of Colorado. Their anger could have far-reaching consequences.

No doubt Cami knew exactly what those consequences could be. She had seen the many jobs her sister had gone through and knew what Rafe had only suspected, that Jaymi had lost those jobs because of him.

She was a teacher; her job depended on the goodwill of the other teachers, the school board, and the parents. No parent in Sweetrock would want a teacher instructing their children who was sleeping with the man suspected of having murdered her sister twelve years ago. A man suspected of conspiring with his two cousins to rape, torture, and murder five other young women between Sweetrock and Aspen, Colorado, during that same time period as well.

Rafe had learned years before not to worry about what the good people of Sweetrock might believe. His mind was invariably set on shocking and scaring any adult who dared to offend him. Hell, they didn’t have to offend him. He was ready to shock, piss off, or frighten any adult who found the courage to confront him in any manner. The inheritance left to him by his mother might have still been tied up in the court system, but the interest from it was not. He was financially secure enough that he didn’t need the barons’ goodwill to survive. Hell, he didn’t even need their ignorance of his existence to make it in Corbin County. All he needed was the military check he received and the considerable interest payment he received each month. After that he could piss off or nearly frighten anyone who attempted to foolishly confront him.

And he didn’t care a bit to do so.

There were even times he had even gained a hint of morbid satisfaction in doing so.

He couldn’t do it to Cami, though. It wasn’t her fault the school board was filled with the high-minded, panty-starched little prudes. The bastards had seemed to actually enjoy each punishment they had dealt out to him during the few years he had attended the high school.

But he’d seen in the shamed, regretful gazes of a few of them that they hadn’t agreed with it. He could find no respect for them, but there was a part of him that could understand it.

Thankfully, he’d managed to graduate early. By the first semester of the final year he had had the credits needed to bypass attendance for the rest of the year.

The school board had been more than willing to allow him to simply return home until the end of the school year. What they hadn’t told him? Unless he was in attendance a required number of days he would lose that year and the credits he had accumulated. Had it not been for the recruiting officer who’d been shadowing Rafe during those last months of high school, then he would have never managed to graduate. He would have been forced to get a GED rather than the diploma he had busted his ass for and had suffered at the local high school to attain.

He’d been determined to have that diploma, even if getting it had been hell. It had been a fight that both he, and the soldier who had befriended him, grew frustrated with.

But Rafe had learned why that soldier had been there. Why he had befriended the three outcast cousins and drawn them into the armed forces, and away from Corbin County. Because he, too, was a Callahan. Given up for adoption by his parents when he was barely six months old, the only knowledge he had of his birth family was what his adopted parents had given him.

When he’d arrived in Corbin County, first during Rafe’s final year of high school and again six months before Jaymi had been killed, he had seen the hell his nephews had endured. It had been on that trip to see them that he had convinced them to join the Marines.

Rafe looked down at the woman in his arms and felt that familiar dark anger from his youth rising inside him. He knew that any moment she could bolt and run, then she would be gone. And the thought of it infuriated him.

He was too damned restless to sleep now. It was one of the reasons he had been drinking himself into a drunk when she showed up on his doorstep. So he could sleep. So he could escape the restlessness and the wary sense of foreboding that had haunted most of his life. Well, at least that part of his life spent in Corbin County. Twelve years in the Marines and eight of those years spent as a sniper, and not once had he felt that same dark foreboding mission. Step his ass into Corbin County with the intent to stay, though, and once again it became a near daily companion.

Easing from the bed, he felt his heart clench at her disappointed little murmur when his warmth eased away from her. She shifted on the bed, searching for him for a moment before settling back to sleep with an unconscious little pout to her lips.

She would walk away, he warned himself again. As easily as, perhaps more easily than, she had walked into his life once again.

It was better that neither one of them grew used to sleeping with the other. Better that he simply let her go. If he could. He had a feeling that letting her go again would be impossible.

Moving to the dresser on the other side of the room, Rafe pulled on jeans and a heavy flannel shirt before sliding his feet into a pair of comfortable sneakers. He collected one of the slim, fragrant cigars he preferred, a lighter, and moved to the balcony doors.

Slipping quietly onto the balcony and easing the door closed Rafe let the night settle around him.

The acrid, spicy sweet taste mixed with the smoke had the immediate effect of easing the worse of the tension that had begun to fill him.

This wasn’t the same warning, or foreboding as his recruiting officer had called it, that had served Rafe so well in the Marines. This was something he had only felt when heading into the most dangerous of the missions he’d undertaken. This wasn’t just a foreboding, it was a straight-up fucking warning.

From the moment Cami’s firm little knock had sounded on his door, those inner sirens had begun going off. And now, staring into the night, he wondered at the sense of danger he could feel edging closer.

He had hoped he could return home, slip in without too much of a ripple, keep to himself, and find the life he’d searched for around the world.

And God knew he’d searched for that place in the world where he could, at the very least, be content. He wasn’t asking for happiness. He’d learned long ago that was far too much to ask for. Contentment, though, hadn’t seemed too high a price to charge for the years he had spent defending his country. After all, he’d also been defending this little corner of America that had decided he and his cousins had no place in their midst.

Or perhaps those other places just weren’t the place whose proud mountains sustained them. That place where their fathers, their grandfather, and his father before him had planted Callahan roots. Those other “places” hadn’t been home.

Logan and Crowe too had found that contentment eluding them. Crowe had actually resigned from the Marines the year before Rafe and Logan had and spent those months alone searching for a place he could call home. Crowe had traveled around for a while, but as he’d written in his last e-mail before they’d returned, evidently there really was no place like home.

For Crowe no place like the cabin his mother had left him that overlooked the sheltered valley below. For Rafe it was the small ranch his Uncle Clyde had owned. The one that his grandmother had been raised on before marrying JR Callahan.

For Logan it had been the house his mother had owned before her death. The one she and his father had lived on. The one he had been born in. It was flat in the middle of Sweetrock. A two-story traditional American with a wide porch surrounding all sides. In the back was the roomy yard he and his cousins had played in as toddlers. Next to it was the garage where his father had allowed him to “help” work on the family car.

The house was surrounded by other similar houses. Once, long, long ago, before his mother had given in and married the father of her child, Logan had played with the neighborhood children there. He had been accepted, and had known a childhood happiness that Rafe only barely remembered while Logan refused to discuss. And none of them could pinpoint why it had changed. Why had their grandfathers, their entire families, turned on the children left behind? What had made them suddenly hate and despise the sons that cherished daughters had given birth to? And why didn’t anyone seem to have the answers to those questions?

Rafe puffed on the cigar again, frowning into the swirling snow and listening to the moan of the wind. Rafe knew it had begun with the daughters marrying the Callahan brothers. Still though, that animosity hadn’t grown against their children until after their deaths.

A grimace tightened his face as he forced himself away from the maze he was beginning to step into. Questions without answers, they could pile up into a mess inside his brain if he let them. There was simply no way to figure out why the families that he and his cousins should have been able to turn to had turned their backs on them instead.

They were the sons of the daughters those three men were known to have once cherished and adored, until the night they had eloped with the three brothers. Three brothers who had spent every day since their return from the military accusing the barons of having murdered their parents, JR and Eileen Callahan.

After twenty-two years of asking “Why”? and of all but begging the good people of Corbin County to just explain what sin they felt their parents had committed, Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had simply stopped caring.

They’d had enough of it the three days they’d sat in that tiny jail cell, frozen with shock and horror, accused of killing a woman all three of them considered their best friend.

It had taken three days for Uncle Calvert, a Marine recruiter, and the lawyer he had hired, to get their release.

Then for another three days Rafe and his cousins had lived in silent shock beneath the care of the man who had raised them and the uncle they hadn’t known still lived.

If it hadn’t been for Ryan, they would have rotted in prison. If they had lived that long. Before Ryan had made it to the jail with the lawyer, all three of them had been beaten so badly by the sheriff and his deputies that it had taken all they had to walk out of the jail.

The evidence at the scene of the crime had been conclusive, the judge had decided. The DNA testing on the blood indicating an older male had gone along with the FBI’s profile of the serial murderer. A profile the FBI stated the Callahans in no way matched. The judge had further concluded that as much as he would love to see Rafe, Logan, and Crowe Callahan locked up for the rest of their natural-born days, he couldn’t in all conscience bring them to trial for a crime he was certain they hadn’t committed.

A man who didn’t know them and hadn’t taken the time to learn anything about them would have loved to see the three of them locked up for the rest of their natural-born days.

Son of a bitch, that memory still had the power to amaze him, and never failed to confuse him.

Leaning against the balcony railing, Rafe flicked the cigar ash over the edge of the railing and narrowed his eyes against the snow.

Their fathers hadn’t been scions of society, but neither had they been the dregs of humanity. And for not the first time in Rafe’s life he was beginning to wonder exactly what three cherished daughters could have done to their families to ricochet back on those daughters’ children? And once again he was asking questions he couldn’t answer.

Now, here Rafe was, right back where he had started, and wondering what the fuck he had come back for. What had made him, Logan, and Crowe hunger for this particular little place in the world?

Because insanity must run on the Callahan side of their genetics, he decided as he puffed the cigar once again and relished the aromatic burn that filled his senses.

He’d be damned if he knew where to go from here, though. He could rebuild the ranch; it had been damned profitable before Clyde Ramsey had died.

Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had had plans for the ranch. They’d been certain the climate would have to be different when they returned and living there wouldn’t be the hardship it had once been. He’d be damned but they couldn’t have been more wrong.

The quiet musings and his enjoyment of the cigar were disrupted by the sound of a powerful snowmobile motor cutting its way through the heavy windswept snow falling from the sky as well as that layered on the ground.

Strong LED lights cut through the white walls of fluff falling around them and traversed at least two feet of heavy, wet snow as the powerful machine made the precarious turn between snow-hidden fences.

Logan or Crowe. The new snowmobiles were unmistakable, and only they were insane enough to be riding through a blizzard for whatever it was they wanted. It could be as simple as sharing a cup of coffee or as complicated as heading back out for whatever wild-assed idea one of them had.

They were bored. He’d sensed it weeks before. And things could get dangerous, especially for Rafe, when Logan and Crowe were bored.

There were times Rafe felt as though he was the adult and his cousins were no more than wayward overgrown children. Very dark, very cynical, but nonetheless as wild as hell and without the normal cautious attitudes most adults displayed at their age. Hell, their time in the Marines as snipers should have fucking matured them. At least by a few more years than it appeared it had.

Sighing heavily, he turned, tamped the cigar out in the small ashtray kept on a ledge by the door, then slipped back into the bedroom.

Cami was still sleeping peacefully, sprawled out on her stomach, her pretty rounded ass emphasized by the silk sheet lying over it.

He pulled the comforter over her body then tucked it to her shoulders before moving for the door. Opening it he headed to the kitchen his steps quick and silent as he moved down the wood stairs.

He’d forgotten about the clothing left tossed on the floor until he stepped into the brightly lit kitchen to see Logan twirling a pair of tiny violet panties on one finger while he held up a matching lace and silk bra with the other. He looked from one to the other with curious moss-green eyes. As though trying to determine exactly what it was or why it was there.

Glancing at Rafe, he dropped the lingerie on the table, then picked up the sweatshirt and read the front of it. Rafe watched as his cousin visibly tensed before turning the sweat shirt and reading the back.

Flannigan #12, Corbin Co. Teachers Softball League.

“Cami Flannigan,” Logan mused softly as Rafe began picking up the clothes, folding them haphazardly, and laying them on the counter. “Did you lose your mind sometime between the agreement we made about Corbin County beauties and whenever you picked her up at?”

The agreement? They weren’t to fuck any woman within a hundred miles of Sweetrock.

“Don’t start, Logan,” Rafe warned him quietly, unwilling to start an argument with Logan that could end up waking Cami.

“You don’t think her father caused us enough trouble after Jaymi was killed? Come on, Rafe, he bombarded your commanding officer with e-mails about us for years. Even Clyde wasn’t safe from Mark Flannigan’s vindictiveness. Do you really want to give him another shot at us? What the hell do you think he’s going to do when he learns you’re fucking his baby girl?”

Mark Flannigan wouldn’t give a damn one way or the other Rafe knew. From what Rafe had learned over the years, Cami’s relationship with her father had only grown colder. The only reason Cami’s father would even pretend to care would be if he could destroy the Callahan cousins with it.

“What I think is that this is my business,” Rafe informed him as he moved to the other side of the kitchen and began making more coffee. “Now, tell me why the hell you’re here in the middle of a blizzard rather than sitting in front of a fire in the house?” Rafe shot him a disgruntled look. “Didn’t we just spend three days opening the house and moving you in?”

And it had sucked, too. Every day neighbors had glared at them from porches or through their windows. Old men had shot them the finger while teenage boys steered a wide path around them. It was more than apparent they weren’t welcome and they sure as hell weren’t wanted.

“I was bored.” Logan shrugged, his expression smoothing out to cool disregard.

“Try again,” Rafe snorted. “Why are you here?”

Sure, he was bored, but his cousin had ridden over thirty miles in a blizzard on a snowmobile. The fact that Crowe had tinkered enough with the engine to make the vehicle capable of it didn’t mean it wasn’t still a damned dumb decision.

Logan leaned back against the inside of the bar counter, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared back at Rafe quietly. Behind him, the darkened living room reflected the fiery red glow of the coals in the fireplace and the large oil portrait of Rafe and his mother when he had been three, standing at her knee.

With long blond hair, dark blue eyes, and porcelain, delicate skin his mother had been Corbin County’s homecoming queen her senior year in high school, voted most likely to succeed, and was considered one of the most beautiful young women in the county.

Her father had commissioned the portrait when she was eighteen. It had taken three years for the artist to get to it. When she’d insisted on including her son, he’d refused to complete payment. Her mother’s older brother Clyde had paid for it instead and hung it over the fireplace.

As she was elegant, considerate, and compassionate, it was often hard to imagine she was actually a part of the cutthroat, icy-eyed Roberts clan. Sometimes, Rafe had heard his father joke, he believed his mother-in-law must have had a lover who fathered Ann Roberts Callahan, because there was no way in hell the heartless Marshal Roberts could have fathered a child so beautiful and warm-hearted. But Rafe had always heard how Marshal had spoiled and adored his daughter. And how he’d fallen into a drunken rage the night she eloped with Sam Callahan.

Logan shifted, drawing Rafe’s attention back to him. “I tried to call, but the phones aren’t getting reception and the land lines are down somewhere between here and town. I thought I’d head out and check on you.” He made it sound as though he had done Rafe a favor.

“In a blizzard?” Rafe arched his brow quizzically. That wasn’t like his cousin. “What happened Logan?”

Rafe could feel the suspicion building inside him stronger now. He knew Logan, and he knew that was bullshit.

“You heard from Crowe lately?” his cousin asked rather than answering the question.

“This morning. He met me out at one of the line shacks to check the condition of it. He seemed fine and didn’t mention any problems. Do we have any problems?” They sure as hell didn’t need any.

Logan shook his head. “Probably just my paranoia,” he finally sighed. “Or the fact I’m the one in town and easier to access.”

“No doubt it’s ‘not’ your paranoia,” Rafe growled. “What was it?”

He grimaced. “Someone was in the house while I was out at the grocery this morning. When I returned, the tape placed at the top of the door had been moved and replaced and the strand of hair in the lock was gone.”

“That doesn’t sound like paranoia to me, Logan,” Rafe growled. “What makes you think it could be?”

Logan’s lips thinned. “Because nothing was on the security camera but the neighbor kid knocking. If he was messing with my locks at the same time, I might have to kill him.”

Rafe hid a smile. The boy, Logan’s neighbor’s brother, had decided to torment Logan however possible.

“Maybe he’s bored,” Rafe suggested with mocking sobriety.

“Yeah, fucking bored,” Logan grunted with a roll of his eyes. “Or maybe he has a death wish I could accommodate.”

Rafe stilled his laughter as he watched the irritation that settled in his cousin’s expression.

“Do you have any idea what he wanted?” Rafe asked as he fixed his cousin’s coffee and slid it across the counter.

“No, to aggravate the hell out of me, maybe? Neighbors are damned sassy, though. All but the kid’s sister that lives next to me. Fucking night owl.” Logan almost grinned.

Evidently that fucking night owl had managed to entertain his cousin in some way.

“Why would the kid care enough to try to pick your lock?”

“For the hell of it? Because he’s a damned teenager?” Logan grunted after sipping at the coffee, then turned and moved to the table.

Before sitting down, Logan stared at the wood table top for a long, thoughtful moment. “You fucked her on the table, didn’t you, cuz?” There was an edge of irritated resignation that Rafe sensed stemmed from the neighbor kid’s sister.

Rafe merely lifted his cup and sipped at his second cup of strong coffee that night. If this kept up, then he was going to start drinking decaf. No wonder his chest was tight with a sense of foreboding.

“Drink your coffee, Logan.” Rafe almost allowed himself to grin. “You can sleep in the downstairs guest room tonight. We’ll check out the house in the morning.” Hell, he’d hoped to get out of letting Cami know about the snowmobile.

Logan stared back at him mockingly. “Storm is supposed to last three days, with a healthy helping of four to maybe six more feet before it’s over, and up to three days to dig out if the temperature stays in the teens as they’re predicting. You really want to lose your houseguest that soon?” Logan’s smile was knowing as he continued.

“I’m fairly certain she doesn’t know about your snowmobile, or she wouldn’t be upstairs in your bed. You’d be on the road trying to navigate the storm and your lust.”

Sucked when someone knew you as well as he and his cousins knew each other.

Rafe sipped at his coffee again, refusing to comment as Logan sat back in his chair and watched him with silent amusement.

“What are you getting yourself into, Rafe?” he finally asked him again the amusement dissipating. “Have you thought about this? Have you thought about how old she is? The same age as Jaymi—”

“Enough, Logan.” He glared back at his cousin. “I won’t think about Jaymi. Not tonight.”

Logan rubbed his hand over his face wearily. “She’s the wrong woman,” he finally growled. “Her father will come after you shooting when he finds out. Are you going to shoot back? Could you shoot back if she were watching?”

“There will be no shooting,” Rafe promised him. “Her father’s in Aspen and he doesn’t come back to Sweetrock very often. Her mother’s health isn’t that good any longer.”

Not that Mark Flannigan had ever taken much interest in his younger daughter. It had been Jaymi that he had shown his love to, and only Jaymi.

Logan shook his head. He was aware of the lack of concern Mark had always shown Cami, especially the summer Jaymi had died. “If she were my daughter, there’s no way in hell I’d sit still while she was in possible danger. Flannigan could end up fooling us.”

“Yeah, and I believe in fairy tales, too,” Rafe drawled cynically. “Trust me, Flannigan’s not going to go to the trouble.”

“And I’m telling you, fucking her is going to rain hell down on you.”

Logan warned him. “For God’s sake, Rafe—”

“Let it go, Logan. As you said, once the storm is over she’ll be gone and she’ll pretend it never happened, just as she has every other time.”

“And the next time the two of you have five minutes alone you’re ripping each other’s clothes off and fucking like minks on top of the kitchen table,” Logan reminded him. “Does that tell you anything?”

“I was too drunk to ignore my hard dick?” Rafe shot back.

“Or too damned stupid to ignore it.” Logan finished his coffee before rising to his feet. Moving to the heavy winter wear he’d taken off after entering the house he told Rafe, “I’m heading to Crowe’s. I doubt very seriously he has a woman in his bed tonight. It would surprise the hell out of me to even learn he’d stayed in the county. That boy ain’t happy to be back. And here he’s the one that talked us into coming back.”

“Why did we come back?” Rafe asked, refusing to stand, knowing how Logan could be. He could get ready to leave fifty times before ever making it out of the door. Knowing Logan as well as Rafe did how and much colder the mountains were as one moved higher into them, he knew damned good and well Logan had probably regretted heading out no sooner than he passed the city limits. Logan was hell for doing his job, no matter how hot or how cold. He was a one-man tracking/killing machine. But he liked his creature comforts and didn’t leave them unless he simply didn’t have a choice.

In his mind, he’d had no choice. He couldn’t reach Rafe by phone and he was determined to ensure his safety. But now he knew his cousin was safe, he’d be damned slow about leaving.

“Why don’t you drop the damned coat and stay here tonight,” Rafe growled as Logan looked outside at the snow and gave a heavy sigh. “If Cami sees you or the snowmobile, then just tell her you’re on your way to Crowe’s and not heading back to town until everything melts enough to drive in.”

That would keep her here without her anger affecting Rafe’s pleasure. And he did intend to have his pleasure until he couldn’t keep her there another second longer.

“That will work.” Logan dropped the coat, but he wasn’t making a move to leave the kitchen.

“What now?” Rafe asked him.

Logan stared back at him, his eyes so hard, so cold, that Rafe wondered if his cousin ever felt warm inside anymore. He definitely didn’t act as though he did.

“You in love with her?” Logan finally asked before giving his head a hard negative jerk as he grimaced. “Yeah, you are,” he answered his own question. “You have been since that first night you spent with her.”

Rafe rose from his chair, finished his coffee, then moved to the sink and set the cup inside it.

“I’m not in love with her.” He turned back to his cousin, confident he wasn’t in love, he couldn’t be in love, he refused to feel anything as futile as love for Cambria Flannigan. She’d run out on him one time too many for him to allow himself to touch that particular fairy tale.

“She’s just a fuck then?”

Rafe’s jaw tightened at the description, some furious, unknown denial raging inside him, demanding he voice the refusal. He held it inside, convincing himself it was simply the too-explicit description his cousin used that bothered him.

“Keep convincing yourself of that,” Logan stated with a mocking smile as he collected his coat, boots, and cold-weather paraphernalia and moved for the living room entrance. “You keep convincing yourself, I’ll keep reminding you, and maybe, when she helps the fine folks of Corbin County decide to try to bury us six feet under and then some, you won’t find that part of your soul shattered.”

As he had before, Rafe wondered as he watched his cousin move through the darkened living room and into the hall that led to the downstairs guest room. Rafe and Crowe had discussed their cousin often, wondering what had happened the year Logan had disappeared from contact completely during a mission he’d been sent on.

Marine snipers were often sent to hotspots that had them out of contact for months at a time. For a year, Logan had been sent on a mission that neither Crowe nor Rafe had been given any information on. Only their uncle and commanding officer, Ryan Calvert, had been aware of what was going on and whether Logan was alive or dead.

When he had returned, he hadn’t been the same man who had left. Logan had been so hard and so cold that for a while Rafe had wondered if his cousin had returned or only his ghost.

Giving his head a hard shake, Rafe checked the locks, checked the lower part of the house, the windows, the latches to the iron window covers, and then moved back upstairs where he repeated the lock check.

Satisfied the house was secure and the alarm system operating fully, he moved back to the bedroom and the woman sleeping in his bed.

She hadn’t moved other than to gather his pillow closer beneath her as though searching for him.

No, she wasn’t searching for him, he told himself. He couldn’t let himself think it or believe it. She was going to walk out of his life the minute the roads were open to afford her escape. And once she left, she wouldn’t return unless she simply had no other choice, as she had had no choice tonight.

Shedding his clothes, Rafe slid back into the bed, eased his pillow away from her, then in surprise felt her moving against him until she settled over his chest once again.

Her head rested on his shoulder, her arm was thrown over his abdomen, one slender, silky warm leg tucked between his, she whispered a discontented little sigh and nudged against him once again.

Pulling the blankets carefully around them, Rafe wrapped his arms around her and held her snug against him. Her next sigh was one of satisfaction, of contentment.

What had he gotten himself into here? he wondered, because holding her felt as natural as breathing and just as imperative. But hell, every time they had come together it had felt like finding home. In his life, nothing had ever felt as warm or as natural as her body against him or the warmth of her sinking into him.

Would she try to leave without waking him if he somehow managed to sleep deep enough to miss her slipping from the bed? In all the years since his training in the military, nothing had ever slipped by him in his sleep as easily as Cami had slipped from his bed that first night.

He’d awakened before she’d finished dressing that morning. For a while he had watched her from beneath his lashes as she hurried and dressed. And he’d let her leave. He had refused to hold her to him and he’d refused to confront her.

It wasn’t a mistake he would make again.

He stared down at her for long moments.

Hell, there was no way he could be certain that he would even awaken this time. It had been three years since the last time she had slipped out of the bed on him. She’d almost been gone before he’d missed her warmth.

Rafe hoped, in the past five years his senses had grown sharper, stronger, and he would know when and if she tried to do it again.

To be sure, he set that mental alarm he’d developed. One hour. He’d check on her in one hour. An hour in this kind of weather wouldn’t get her far; he’d at least have a chance of catching up with her before she froze to death.

And if she did try to leave?

Well then, he’d paddle her ass, before he fucked it until she swore, until she knew, believed, and had cemented in her head forever the idea that she would never, ever, run from him again.