Haunting Desire (18 page)

Tiarnan nodded, his silent understanding opening a floodgate within her. She felt tears burning in her eyes—tears that she’d sworn would never be shed. Deep down she felt that she deserved to carry those tears locked away inside. They were her burden, her cross. And she’d welcomed the pain their holding brought. It was her fault her mother died. She’d escalated the age-old argument into a shouting match. Because of Shealy, her dad had taken his attention from the winding road. . . . She
should
suffer.

She knew that children always felt responsible when tragedy struck. But she couldn’t stop the feeling of blame, the sense that in her case that feeling was well deserved.

“When the doctors were done with me, I didn’t even recognize myself,” she said with a brittle laugh. “They didn’t just fix me. They changed me. They made me better. The new and improved Shealy O’Leary.”

Tiarnan said nothing. He just waited for her to go on. She tried to summon some anger about that—tried to twist his silence into a verdict and use it as a wall between them. Already he’d managed to bring her to new thresholds and entice her over without any awareness of his manipulation. He hadn’t breached her barriers—he’d simply ignored them and they’d crumbled into the useless dust they were.

“They would have done more for me. Fixed the last of the scars—erased all evidence of what had happened, but they couldn’t.”

Her voice broke and she took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself to go on. Feeling like it was a test of courage now, with Tiarnan the judge. But that wasn’t fair—he demanded nothing with his quiet presence.

He took her hand in his, letting the hard pad of his thumb trill along her pounding pulse. That small gesture, that subdued caress, nearly stopped her. Her voice sounded strained, the words disconnected, but somehow speaking them kept her grounded and able to focus beyond his touch.

“My body couldn’t tolerate the anesthesia—the medicine they had to give me in order to do the surgery. So they had to stop.”

They’d realized then that they couldn’t fix everything unless they were willing to kill her to do it. And secretly, she thought they might have considered it.

“By then it wasn’t about fixing me anymore. I’d become, I don’t know, their ‘masterpiece’ and leaving me flawed went against the grain. I felt like they blamed me. Like it was my fault I couldn’t tolerate the anesthesia long enough to allow them to finish. And you know, maybe they were right.”

“Why would they be right, Shealy?”

“Because I didn’t want them to finish. I mean, who wants to be perfect?”

He smiled gently at that, and again she felt that throbbing need to cry. Why, after all this time, had she dredged this up? Why did it feel like it had all happened just yesterday?

“People used to look at me,” Tiarnan said in that deep voice that felt like fur against her senses. “They’d see my father. They’d want me to be him.
I
wanted me to be him. I tried so hard to do what he would have done, but he was a great man. I could never stand as tall as he did.”

Shealy looked at Tiarnan, saw the shame he couldn’t quite conceal. “I never met your dad—and don’t get me wrong, I know what you’re saying. I’ve experienced it myself, that . . . feeling like you’ll never be good enough no matter what you do. But I think you are a great man, Tiarnan. You
are
an amazing man.”

He looked startled by the throbbing emotion in her declaration. In honesty, she was surprised by it as well. It rattled her already crumbling composure.

After a moment that felt endless to Shealy, Tiarnan asked, “After they called y’
done
, what happened then?”

“They applauded each other. Said with enough makeup no one would be able to see my imperfections and then they paraded me around town. Even with all the time the surgeons donated, there were bills, and my dad didn’t make enough money to pay them.” She shook her head, thinking of the mountains of debt. “I was approached by a modeling agency. A cosmetic line wanted me to endorse their products. They figured I was a novelty, and if they could cover my scars, they could defeat any old wrinkle.” The humor was lost on Tiarnan, but it wasn’t really that funny anyway.

“The pay was good and Dad and I needed the money, so I took it. The ad campaign was very successful and the more famous I became, the more money the New Smile Foundation received from donors. It was a win-win situation.”

“That is good,” he said, but she caught the question in his tone. She knew that he’d heard at least some of what she hadn’t said, and it made her defensive now.

“Of course it is,” she said sharply.

“But it hurts y’?” he asked.

How did he know that? “No. Bringing in the funds the foundation so desperately needs—it’s given my life purpose.”

It was the truth and she stared at him until she was sure he understood that.

“It’s just that in order to make people open their wallets, they have to see results. So there’s always the before and after.”

He waited, silent. She forced herself to go on.

“They show my face after the accident and then they show me now. Only it’s not really me. Not the real
me
anyway. There’s always a pound of makeup and then the image is touched up before it’s shown. Look at my face.”

She turned to him, knowing she wore that defiant look he’d commented about. A part of her wanted him to recoil. Wanted him to be disappointed that she wasn’t as perfect as everyone thought she was. That reaction she knew. She’d lived with it for years, and it didn’t bother her.

“I can tell there’s something yer braced and waiting for.” Those warm, callus-roughened hands moved up her shoulders to her throat, his thumb grazing the sickle-shaped scar on her neck. He cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. “I see it in yer eyes.”

She blinked, surprised and angry to find moisture building there again, trying to become tears she refused to shed.

“I think y’ are beautiful. Did y’ not hear me before?”

She clenched her jaw, steeled her heart against the soft words. She’d heard this before, from other men who’d been as perplexed as Tiarnan by her savage insistence that the scars were horrible, repelling.

Shealy knew that the scars had nothing to do with what she felt deep down. She didn’t really care about them—knew that if she let them be forgotten, they would be.

But they’d become her blockade, her defense. Her excuse.

Because there was something wrong with Shealy. Perhaps inside she’d always known.

Gently, he touched the side of her face, running his fingers up to the damaged shell of her ear. The skin there was at once hypersensitive and numb, and the heated caresses seemed to glance off each alternating point in a jumble of sensation.

Before she could think of a cutting response, of a way to stop his foray into her most vulnerable core, he pressed his lips to her cheek, flicked his tongue over the mottled scarring, brought his mouth to her ear, and said softly, “There is not an inch of y’ that I would not taste.”

The words sent a trembling shudder down from the very top of her head to the tips of her toes. In the shivering wake, she felt hot and cold, her skin tight and fluid. Every nuance of the night before flooded her senses, reminding her of that heated pool he’d made burn within her.

She wanted to step closer, to press her body against his heat, let him do whatever he might want. But she felt so completely exposed—so completely out of her depth with him. There was no shield, no mask. He saw through it all, made the idea of either completely ridiculous. If she let him in any deeper, there would be no secrets, no place to hide.

She took a jerky step back and then turned away and quickly started walking again.

After a moment, he fell in step beside her. She prayed he’d changed the subject, let it drop completely. But of course he didn’t.

“So it’s yer image the men talked about?”

She almost spun and snarled “
What men
?” before she remembered that Tiarnan had said he’d heard the others talking about her.

“I suppose.”

He said nothing for a moment, and she glanced at him to find that he looked embarrassed.

“What exactly did they say, Tiarnan?” she asked, wishing she could swallow the question whole. Wishing that it didn’t have to be asked.

He didn’t answer, and she knew if she let it drop, so would he. And that’s what she wanted, but the very shame she felt in thinking it stopped her.

“Did they talk about a blindfold?” she asked.

Scowling, he nodded.

“I did a spread in a magazine—a book of pictures. In it I was wearing a red blindfold and . . .” She swallowed, feeling her face burn. “And nothing else above the waist. Just my hands, strategically placed.”

They’d wanted her to wear a gag instead of the blindfold, but she couldn’t tolerate having something over her mouth. It was too much like the equipment that had kept her alive after the accident. The blindfold had been hard enough.

The photo spread had been disturbing, compelling, artistic. It had gone on the cover of
Vogue
and been their number-one-selling issue for the year.

“Y’ let someone take yer likeness when y’ were wearing nothing but a blindfold?”

“I had pants on,” she said defensively. “It was only the waist up.”

But that wasn’t the point, and they both knew it.

“I don’t understand,” he said, and his expression mirrored his bewilderment. “I can see on yer face that it’s not something yer proud of. Why did y’ do it?”

She lifted a hand to the scars and then dropped it. “It’s difficult to explain,” she said.

“Try.”

There was something hard in that single word and yet something beseeching. She saw that he could not reconcile the image in his head with what he knew of Shealy. She understood—even her father had been mystified by her decision to be photographed in such a way.

“Have you ever been faced with something that scares you so badly, you just want to run?”

Tiarnan raised his brows and looked around them, and she realized how foolish her question was. Tiarnan’s world was one of absolute danger. He would have to be dead not to fear it.

“I mean, something here,” she said and tapped her fingers to the hard, slabbed muscle of his chest.

He looked down at her hand then took it in his and flattened her fingers over his heart. She felt the warm beat, the steady pulse.

“Aye,” he said softly. “I have.”

“I felt that every time I opened my eyes. I was always afraid I’d be caught for being such a fraud.”

“Fraud?”

“Here I was walking around with this face that everyone thought was so perfect. But if they saw me in the morning, like this”—she shrugged—“the show would be over. It was like walking on a tightrope.”

She could see that he didn’t quite get her terminology, but the gist came through. “One of the photographers who’d seen me before and after suggested it—a photo with no makeup, showing the scars. I said no at first. I couldn’t think of exposing myself that way. But then I decided I had to do it. I had to be fearless.”

He waited, listening intently. She realized that in her whole life, no one had ever listened to her with such focus. It unnerved her.

“I didn’t tell anyone what I planned. He took the pictures—”

“A man?”

“Yes. Would it help to know he was gay?”

The baffled expression answered her.

“He wasn’t interested in me that way. He only saw me through his camera. In the pictures I didn’t wear makeup. And I didn’t wear a top so the scars wouldn’t be hidden. It was just me, with my hair pulled back in a ponytail, a red blindfold, and the scars on my face and this one.” Her finger went to the slashing wound on her neck. “It was symbolic for me. I’d almost died and this was me . . . reborn.”

He pushed her hand away and traced the scar with his fingertips. Shealy shivered, and it seemed he felt the movement inside himself. His glittering brown eyes met hers and held.

“It felt honest. I guess I needed that.”

His warm palm spread over the slashing scar at her throat, covering it, heating it. His long fingers pressed against the hollow behind her ear, the vulnerable dip beneath her chin.

“What they see,” she went on, her voice thick with emotion, “what the men talk about . . . what they think they know . . . it doesn’t exist.”

“What I see is real,” he said softly. “I see
you
.”

He drew out the last word instead of clipping it short as he usually did, and despite her determination to turn away, to not show him how deep he cut with that simple statement, she didn’t. What she saw in his eyes undermined her resolve, shook her foundation. She thought that maybe he was right—maybe he did see her. And it terrified her.

“I guess I sound pretty crazy, huh?” she said, meaning to add a sharp edge of sarcasm, managing only a whisper of uncertainty.

Staring into Tiarnan’s eyes was like looking into a pool of molten amber. And then he smiled and his whole face transformed, from the fine lines that crinkled at the corners of his eyes to the hint of a dimple in his cheek. He was beautiful—carved masculinity that evoked such a feminine response in her that she wanted to arch her back and rub against him.

Stunned by the visceral reaction, she tried to step away, but Tiarnan’s hands cupped her face and his mouth came down over hers, hot, demanding. She gave without hesitation, opening to his gentle onslaught, falling into the thrill that burned down low inside her.

“I do think yer crazy,” he muttered against her lips. “But it seems to be working for y’ and it’s doing the job on me as well.”

He leaned back, winked, and started walking again.

Mouth open, she followed. But before she could say anything else, before he could clarify just what he meant by his statement, a strange whistle broke the silence. Tiarnan stopped, grabbing her arm and jerking her to a halt as well. He put his finger to his lips and hushed her before she could speak. From nowhere, Liam and Ellie reappeared. Silent, Liam handed the child to Shealy and pulled a short-handled ax from the leather loop holding it at his belt.