Forever After (34 page)

“I’m not. I hardly ever cry, and certainly never to manipulate someone!”

“Good. It’d be a waste of your energy.”

He kept glaring at the road, hoping she believed him, because he knew he’d be all over himself apologizing if she shed one tear. And right now, he didn’t want to apologize. He was royally pissed off, had every right to be, and he needed some time to work his way past it.

Sex
. That was what she thought he had on his mind. No
wonder she had been clinging to her door and looking so tense. She was dreading the grand event.
Christ
. As if he was that desperate. He didn’t even
like
blondes, dammit. Especially not a short one with great big eyes, the personality of a rug, and a figure like Popeye’s girlfriend. What was her name? Olive Oil. Or was it Olive Oyle? Hell, what did it matter? The point was, Mary Calendri, a.k.a. Meredith Kenyon, didn’t have what it took to drive him to rape.

His hands slippery with sweat on the steering wheel, Heath kept driving. At this point, it was way too late to turn back. As if he would have, even if he’d had that choice. No, what he really wanted to do was strangle her.

As for what he expected as payback, maybe he should take his cue from her and be the bastard she obviously believed him to be, he thought furiously. Far be it from him to disappoint a lady. Her words kept slamming into his brain, making him madder and madder. Never once had he
ever
given her cause to think that of him. Just the opposite. When he recalled all the times he had practically glued his eyeballs to the floor to keep from ogling her figure, all the times he had wanted to kiss her and didn’t, all the times he’d fantasized about screwing her brains out and made no moves on her…
Damn!
Maybe he should have just copped a few feels when the mood struck. He sure as hell hadn’t earned any Brownie points by behaving like a gentleman.

A few minutes later, he noticed that Meredith’s head was starting to nod. That
really
pissed him off. He felt like reaching over and pinching her awake. Wasn’t that just like a woman? She got a man so furious he was snapping at his own tail and then she took a nap.

Glancing at his illuminated watch dial, he decided she was probably exhausted. It was after midnight, and she’d had one hell of a day. Unlike him, she wasn’t accustomed to pulling double shifts and going without rest. Nor had she learned to insulate her emotions when all hell broke loose.

Hell, the fact that she’d fallen asleep was proof of how tired she was. For all she knew, he might pull over at any
moment to start collecting on all those sacrifices he’d made for her.

His mouth twitched at the corners. The fact that he was about to smile made him all the more furious. Who was crazier, her or him? He had it bad. No question about it. He was Stetson over boot heels in love with her.

Stetson?

He glanced around the truck. Son of a bitch. His
hat
! Where the hell had he left it? He had already thrown his badge away. His career was destroyed. The future looked so grim, even speaking of it was tantamount to saying the “F” word. Was it too goddamned much to ask that he at least get to keep his hat?

He shot a glare at Meredith.
Sleeping beauty!
It was one thing to screw up his whole life for her. But, by God, a man’s hat was another matter. She sure as hell did owe him. Big time.

Her head lolled against the door, her neck twisting toward her shoulder. She was going to get a stiff neck. And why the hell did he care? Right now, she was lucky he didn’t have his hands around her throat. His Stetson. God, he was going to miss it.

He glanced over at Meredith again, then sighed and reached across the truck to grab her shoulder and straighten her posture. Her head lolled back over the top of the seat, her lips sputtering on a feminine snore.

He smiled slightly, then caught himself and scowled.
Damn
. Even when he wanted to kill her, all it took was one look at her, and he got soft in the head.

And hard elsewhere.

Maybe she was right, and his motivation all boiled down to one thing: sex. She was one extremely expensive piece of ass, if that was the case. His Stetson had cost him a hundred and ten bucks.

The cabin was nestled high on a mountain amongst a stand of majestic pine and fir trees. In the beam of the flashlight Heath carried when he entered the cabin to light the lan
terns, Meredith saw that the structure was fashioned from logs with a red aluminum roof. When she went inside moments later, she took a quick tour to discover that the furnishings were sturdy and practical. The floor plan could best be described as compact and functional, with two bedrooms, one small with a double bed, the other hardly bigger than a closet with a child-sized cot.

After tucking Sammy into the cot for the night, Meredith scotched all thoughts of joining the child there later. Goliath immediately snuggled down beside the little girl, taking up what little extra room there was, and she didn’t think he or Sammy would appreciate it if she ousted him. That left one remaining bed, and two individuals who needed a place to sleep.

In an attempt to block that worry from her mind, she applied herself to the task of helping Heath unload the pickup. She tried to ignore his angry scowl and the fact that he barely spoke to her, but that was difficult. He was so big. And so furious. She felt as if she were locked in a cage with an unpredictable gorilla.

After they had carried everything inside, she busied herself putting the food away while he sorted his ammunition on the kitchen table and systematically began loading the weapons. He scarcely looked in her direction, but when he did, there was no mistaking the angry glint in his eyes.

It was just as well that he was ignoring her, she thought, as she sank wearily onto a chair across the table from him. Watching him handle the guns made her head swim with memories of Dan, especially when he picked up the handguns, Dan’s choice of weapon. To this day, the smell of gunpowder made her feel queasy, and if Heath looked at her, he was bound to notice she was turning a little green.

As if he would care. He was mad at her, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d never intended to offend him earlier. In fact, she’d tried her best to avoid discussing her feelings entirely. But, oh, no. He had insisted. And just look where honesty had gotten her. Now he looked as if he were chew
ing nails, and try as she might, she could think of no way to mend her fences.

Stupid, so stupid
. Half the time, that had been part of her trouble with Dan, saying something to set him off.

“Heath?”

He slapped the semiautomatic’s loaded magazine into its niche, the gunmetal making that unmistakable rasp that always made her skin crawl. She jumped with a start.

“What?”

Dark head bent, his expression stony, he fairly spat out the word. Meredith swallowed, hoping to steady her voice. Fat chance. Being around a furious man made her hair stand on end, and no amount of swallowing and taking deep breaths was going to cure the problem.

“I, um…want to try to explain about what I said in the truck.”

“No need. You made it pretty clear.”

“No, I mean explain
why
I said it.” She hugged her waist, which was tender from where Delgado had kicked her. “My, um…anxieties. They aren’t—well, they have nothing to do with you, and you shouldn’t take them personally.”

He shot her a frosty look. “Nothing to do with me? And I shouldn’t take it personally? Pardon me all to hell. I think sex is pretty damned personal. Coercing a woman to have sex, in any fashion, is tantamount to rape. At least, in my books. It isn’t in yours?”

“Yes. No! I mean—” She rubbed at her temple. “Of
course
it is! But—”

“And you’re concerned that sex is my price for helping you. Correct? So, in effect, you think I’m the kind of man who would
force
a woman? Right?”

“No!”

“Explain it to me. Which part didn’t I get right? My price? Are you saying you
weren’t
worried about my demanding sex from you?”

“No, I—” Meredith realized she was staring at him through a blur of tears, and for once, she wasn’t weeping
for herself or Sammy. She had hurt this man, badly, and he, of all men, didn’t deserve that from her. “Please, will you just be quiet and let me explain?”

He shrugged. “You’ll think I’m a goddamned stump. Talk away.”

“I
don’t
believe you would ever force me,” she began. “And yet I do.”

He snorted. “I feel better already.”

“You said you’d be a stump.”

He shot her another look, this one as searing as the other had been frosty. “Sorry. It’s just difficult to keep my mouth shut when my character is being denigrated.”

“It’s
not
about you! Can’t you understand that? It stems from my past. My rational side knows that I’m being absurd. But there’s this little voice at the back of my mind that keeps whispering, ‘Be careful. Don’t trust blindly. Don’t make the same mistake twice.’” She held up her hands and leaned forward in her chair, pleading with her gaze. “Only I can’t be careful. This situation hasn’t given me time to breathe, let alone think. Things are happening so fast! Just like before. I trusted Dan with all my heart, believing him to be everything he pretended to be, and look where it got me!”

The glint in his eyes reminded her of flint sparking off steel. In that moment, he seemed gigantic to her, all hard muscle and raw masculinity. His dark, collar-length hair was wind-tossed, his steely blue eyes contrasting sharply with the burnished cast of his features. Tension knotted the tendons along his jaw and drew his mouth into a thin, uncompromising line.

Setting the loaded gun aside, he pushed up from the chair to pace back and forth for at least a full minute. When he finally stopped, he turned to regard her. Meredith had no idea what to expect when he sauntered toward her, his gait lazy and unhurried. When he reached down to cup her chin, she tensed. To her surprise, he hunkered in front of her. Looking into his eyes, she saw tenderness mixed in with his anger now, the latter disappearing entirely as his sensual
mouth tipped into one of those grins that always managed to make her knees feel weak.

“I think I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he told her huskily. “After what you’ve been through, I guess you have every right to be a little gun-shy, and I had no business getting pissed off because you were honest with me about it.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” she said shakily.

“And that’s it, isn’t it? I got my feelings hurt.” His mouth curved up at one corner again. “And instead of admitting that, I got mad.”

“I’m so sorry. You’re the last person on earth I would ever try to hurt.”

“I shouldn’t have let it hurt. In fact, I feel like a jerk. You have a problem, and you wanted me to help you deal with it, and instead, I blew up at you. I wish I hadn’t.”

“It’s all right. Really. It’s a stupid problem.”

“It is
not
stupid.”

He sounded so emphatic that it emboldened her. “I feel so mixed up inside. It’s like I’ve got two of me running around in there.”

“God forbid. One of you is all I can handle.”

Meredith laughed in spite of herself, and yet she had an awful urge to cry. After what he’d said in the truck, she was terrified she might. “I think maybe I need counseling. My feelings aren’t—right. They’re twisted and sick.” She looked into his eyes. Those wonderful blue-gray eyes, and she remembered her thoughts of him in the Bronco when she’d been afraid he might die for her. “I’m—I’m in love with you, you know.”

He said nothing for an endlessly long moment, rubbing his thumb over her bottom lip. “I’ve been hoping you might be. It’d be a hell of a note if you weren’t. I’ve never loved a woman before, so I don’t have a measuring stick, but I’d say I’m about as far gone as a guy can get.”

Meredith already knew that. He had said it with his actions so many times, most eloquently tonight. Lots of men claimed to love a woman enough to die for her. Heath had
never boasted that; he’d just gone out and put his life on the line. That’s why she knew her fears were irrational, the twisted reasoning of an emotionally sick person. She had
nothing
to fear from this man. Nothing. And yet the thought of his touching her intimately made her quake.

“So you see my problem?” she asked him shakily. “I should
want
to be with you. I need professional help.”

His eyes went dark and molten. “You need to be loved, Meredith. And I don’t mean sex, so don’t get claustrophobic.” His mouth curved up at the corners. “That will come. Right now, you just need to be loved, with no expectations, by a man who’s willing to listen and help you deal with all these feelings. As it happens, I know a fellow who might volunteer for the job.”

“How can
you
help me? You’re my problem!”

He narrowed one eye at her. “I am not your problem. Old baggage with Dan Calendri’s name on it is your problem. You need to talk to me about that. Get it out of your head and in the open. I can testify to the fact that it helps. Talking to you about Laney got a lot of the demons off my back.”

“I’m glad. But it won’t work for me. Talking? I can’t talk about Dan. I just can’t! I’m so
ashamed
. If I told you all of it, you’d
never
look at me in the same way again.”

“Ashamed? You? Why, for God’s sake? It was Dan’s shame, not yours.”

Meredith felt the tears welling. An awful ache centered in her chest and at the back of her eyes. “I’m sure you’ve read about women like me or heard discussions on talk shows. The victims! Pathetic creatures who stay in abusive situations, who somehow
need
to feel dominated and be humiliated. Or else they’re so weak and scared, they can’t find the courage to help themselves. The last, that was me. I
stayed
, Heath. I stayed and
let
him victimize me! And then I let him victimize Sammy. When I remember, I’m disgusted with myself, and if you knew what I allowed him to do to me, you’d be disgusted, too.”