by Nora Roberts
“You don’t pay someone back for friendship,” he said wearily.
“You wanted me.” Her breath hitched once as he turned slowly to face her. “I thought it was just . . . just the usual.” Her nervous hands brushed at her hair, at the thighs of the jeans she’d pulled on before leaving the main house that morning. “But you never touched me that way, or pressured me, or made me feel obliged. You can’t know what it’s like to feel obliged to let someone have you just to keep peace. How degrading that is. I have things to tell you.”
She couldn’t look at him, turned her face away. “I’ll start with Jesse. Could I cook breakfast?”
He held a cup in his hand as he stared at her. “What?”
“It will be easier for me if I have something to do while I talk. I don’t know if I can get it out just sitting here.”
Since it was what she wanted, he set the cup down, walked to the table, and sat. “There’s bacon in the refrigerator. And eggs.”
She let out a long, unsteady breath. “Good.” She went to the coffee first, poured him a cup. But her gaze avoided his. “I told you a little,” she began as she went to the refrigerator. “About how I was teaching. I was never as smart or as creative as my mother. She’s amazing, Adam. So strong and vital. I didn’t know until I was twelve how much he’d hurt her. My father. I heard her talking to a friend once, crying. She’d just met my stepfather, and she was, I realize now, afraid of her feelings for him. She was talking about preferring to be alone, about never wanting to be vulnerable to a man again. About how my father had turned her out, and she’d been so much in love with him. He’d turned her out, she said, because she hadn’t given him a son.”
Adam said nothing as she arranged bacon in a black iron frying pan and set it to sizzle. “So it was because of me that she was alone and afraid.”
“You know better than that, Lily. It was because of Jack Mercy.”
“My heart knows it.” She smiled a little. “It’s my head again. In any case, I never forgot that. She did marry my stepfather two years later. And they’re very happy. He’s a wonderful man. He was strict with me. Never harsh, but strict, and a bit remote. It was my mother he wanted, and I came with the package. He wanted the best for me, gave me all he could, but he could never give me the kind of easy affection there might have been between a father and daughter. It was, I guess, too late in starting for us.”
“And you were hungry for that easy affection.”
“Oh, starved.” She whipped eggs in a bowl. “I got a lot of this out of therapy and counseling much later. It’s so easy to see it now. I’d never had a warm, loving relationship with a male figure. I’d never had a man focused on me. And I was shy, crushingly shy in school, with boys. I didn’t date much, and I was very serious about my studies.”
Her smile was a bit more natural as she grated cheese into the eggs. “Terribly serious. I couldn’t see things the way my mother could, so I rooted myself in facts and figures. And I was good with children, so teaching seemed a natural course. I was twenty-two and teaching fifth grade when I met Jesse. In a coffee shop near my apartment. My first apartment, the first month I was out on my own. He was so charming, so handsome, so interested in me. I was dazzled.”
Automatically she sprinkled dill in the beaten eggs, ground a hint of pepper over them. “I suppose he picked me up. That was a new experience for me. We went to the movies that same evening. And he called me every day after school. Brought me flowers and little gifts. He was a mechanic, and he tuned up this pitiful car I had.”
“You fell in love with him,” Adam concluded.
“Oh, yes, completely, blindly in love. I never looked past the surface with Jesse, didn’t know I should. Later I could pick out the lies he’d told me. About his family, his past, his work. His mother, I found out later, was in an institution. She’d beaten him as a child, she drank and used drugs. So did he, but I never knew until we were married. The first time he hit me . . .”
She trailed off, cleared her throat. For a moment there was only the sound of grease crackling as she took bacon out of the pan.
“It was about a month after we were married. One of my friends at school was having a birthday, and we were going to go to one of those clubs. Silly. Where the men dance and women tuck dollar bills into their jockstraps. Just foolishness. Jesse seemed to think of it that way too, until I was dressing to go. Then he started on what I was wearing, the dress, the hair, the makeup. I laughed, sure that he was teasing me. Suddenly he grabbed my purse, emptied it out, tore up my driver’s license. I was so shocked, so angry, I grabbed it back from him. And he knocked me down. He was slapping me, shouting, calling me names. He tore my clothes and he raped me.”
With surprisingly steady hands, she poured eggs into the pan. “He cried afterward, like a baby. Huge, racking sobs.” She let out a little breath because it was too easy to remember, to see it all again. “Jesse had been in the Marines—he was so proud of that, of his discipline and strength. You can’t imagine what it was like to see someone I’d thought was so strong cry that way. It was shocking, and devastating, and in a terrible way empowering.”
Strength, Adam thought, had nothing to do with uniforms or biceps. He hoped she’d learned that as well.
“He begged me to forgive him,” Lily went on. “Said he’d gone crazy with jealousy, thinking about other men being near me. He said that his mother had left his father when he was a child. Ran off with another man. Before, he had told me she’d died. Both were lies, but I believed him, and I forgave him.”
It wasn’t easy to be honest, all the way honest, but she wanted to be. “I forgave him, Adam, because it made me feel strong, in that moment. And because I thought if he’d lost control that way it had to be because he loved me. That’s part of the trap—the cycle. He didn’t hit me again for eight weeks.”
Slowly, and with great concentration, she stirred the bubbling eggs. “Doesn’t matter what it was over. It was a pattern that I refused to see, that I was just as much responsible for as he was. He started to drink, and he lost his job, and he beat me. I forgot the toast,” she said matter-of-factly, and walked over to the bread box.
“Lily—”
She shook her head. “I let him convince me it was my fault. Every time my fault. I wasn’t smart enough, sexy enough, quiet enough, loose enough. Whatever the situation called for. It went on for over a year. Twice he put me in the hospital and I lied and said I’d fallen. Then one day I looked at myself in the mirror. I saw what my friends had been seeing all those months, what they saw when they tried to talk to me about it, to help me. The bruises, that animal look in the eye, the bones sharp in my face because I couldn’t keep weight on.”
She went back to the eggs, turning them gently as they set. “I walked out. I don’t remember exactly. I know I didn’t take anything, and that I went home to my mother, just like the cliché. I know I was afraid, because he’d told me he would never let me go. That if I ever left, he’d come after me. But I knew I’d kill myself if I stayed even another day. I had thought about it, planned how I would do it. With pills, because I’m a coward.”
She arranged the eggs, the toast, the bacon on a plate and brought it to the table. “He came after me,” she said, and for the first time looked into Adam’s face. “He was waiting for me one day when I went out, and he dragged me to his car. He choked me, screaming at me. He drove off with me half unconscious beside him. He was calmer then, explaining things to me the way he’d always done. Why I was wrong, why I needed to be taught how a wife was supposed to behave. I was more terrified then than I’d ever been before. When he was calm, I was more afraid of what he would do—could do to me.”
She steadied herself, because the fear could sneak back at any time, peck away at her faltering courage. “He had to slow down for traffic, and I jumped out. The car was still moving, but I didn’t fall. I always thought it was a miracle. I went to the police and got a restraining order. I started to move around. He always fo
und me. The last time, the time before I came here, he found me again, and I think he would’ve killed me that time, but a neighbor heard me screaming and beat at the door. Started breaking in the door. And Jesse ran.”
She sat, folded her hands on the table. “So did I. I didn’t think he could find me here. I’ve barely contacted my mother because I was afraid he’d get to me through her. But I spoke with her this morning, before I came out to the stables. She hasn’t seen him or heard from him.” She drew a deep breath. “I know that you and Ben and Nate are going to talk to the police about this. I’ll answer any questions about him. But he never hurt anyone but me that I know of. And he only ever used his hands. It seems that if he had found me, he would have come after me.”
“He’ll never hurt you again.” He nudged the plate aside so he could cover her hands with his. “Whatever the answers are, Lily, he’ll never touch you again. I swear it.”
“If it is him . . .” She squeezed her eyes tight. “If it is, Adam, then I’m responsible. I’m responsible for two people’s lives.”
“No, you’re not.”
“If it is him,” she continued calmly, “I have to face that, and live with it. I’ve been hiding here, Adam, using you and Will and this place to keep all the bad things away. It doesn’t work.” She sighed, turned her hands over in his. “I have to face it. I learned that in therapy too. I don’t have courage, not the natural kind like Will and Tess have. What I have has been learned, practiced. I was afraid to tell you all this, and now I wish I had told you right from the start. It would make the rest of this easier.”
“There’s more?”
“Not about Jesse, and not about the horrible things, but it’s hard.”
“You can tell me anything.”
“With all that happened last night, my mind keeps coming back and rerunning this one moment.” With a nervous laugh, she drew her hands out from under his. “I wish you’d eat. It’s going cold.”
“Lily.” Baffled, he pressed his fingers to his eyes, then obediently shifted his plate, lifted his fork. “What one moment?”
“It’s just that I thought, as I was saying before, that you wanted me, that it was the usual. I didn’t see how it could be anything but, well, that knee-jerk sort of response men have. Pheromones.” She glanced up, wary as he choked. “It seemed that way,” she said, defensive now. “And you never said or did anything to indicate otherwise. Until last night. And that moment when you took my face in your hands, and you looked at me. And everything went away but you when you kissed me. Everything went away except you, then it all went wrong, but for that moment, just that one moment, it was so lovely.”
She rose quickly, hurried to the stove. “I know it was New Year’s. People kiss at midnight, and it doesn’t mean—”
“I love you, Lily.”
The words slid through her like hope. She caught them, held them to her, and turned. He stood now, only a step behind her, the thin winter sunlight on his hair, and his eyes only for her.
“I fell in love the minute I saw you. But then, I’d been waiting for you all my life. Just for you.” He held out a hand. “Only for you.”
Joy broke through the hope, a hot, bubbling geyser through a calm pool. “It’s so simple really.” She took his hand. “When it’s right, it’s so simple.” And went into his arms. “I don’t want to be anywhere but with you.”
“We’re home here.” He buried his face in her hair. “Stay with me.”
“Yes.” She turned her lips to his throat, caught the first sharp flavor of him. “I’ve wanted you to touch me. Adam, touch me now.”
He cupped her face, as he had before. Kissed her, as he had before. But this time her arms came around him, and her response was soft and sweet and shy. When he drew her away, he didn’t have to ask, but led her out of the kitchen into the bedroom with its tidily made bed and simple window shades.
Then he touched her hair, stepped back to give her room to decide. “Is it too soon?”
The wanting trembled inside her. “No, it’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
Turning, he pulled the shades so that the sun pulsed gold behind them and turned morning into dusk inside the small room. She took the first step, and it was easier than she could have imagined. She sat on the side of the bed, the color high in her cheeks as she removed her boots. He sat beside her, did the same, then kissed her, quietly.
“Are you afraid?”
It was a wonder to her that she wasn’t. Nervous, yes, but without real fear. She knew the flavor of real fear, and its bitter aftertaste, well. Shaking her head, she rose and lifted her hands to the buttons of her shirt.
“I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“The woman I love is going to lie with me. How could I be disappointed?”
Watching him, alert for every response, she slipped the shirt off her shoulders. For a moment, she held it bunched in front of her breasts. She would remember this, Lily thought, every moment of this. Every word, every movement, every breath.
He stood, walked to her. A hand on her shoulder first, a light stroke along the curve, his eyes on hers. Gently, he took the shirt from her, let it fall. His gaze lowered, as did his hands, both skimming softly over the tops of her breasts.
She let her eyes close as his fingers trailed, dipped, traced. Then she opened them slowly to unfasten the buttons of his shirt, draw the flannel aside, then watch the pale skin of her hands glide over the smooth copper of his chest.
“I want to feel you against me.” He murmured it as he unhooked her bra, slid the straps down, let it slip to the floor between them. Gathering her close, he held her. A tremor rippled through him, a calm lake disturbed by a lazy finger. “I won’t hurt you, Lily.”
“No.” Of that she could be certain. Of that she could be sure, as his lips lowered to test the skin of her shoulders, her throat. There would be no pain here, not even that of embarrassment. Here there was trust, and desire could be kind.
She didn’t jump when his fingers tugged at the snap of her jeans. She shuddered, but not with fear, as he slid the denim down over her hips, murmuring to her as he helped her step free.
Her heart quaked when he stripped off his own jeans, but it quaked in delight and wonder and keen anticipation.
He was so beautiful, that golden skin taut over lean muscles, that sleek, shiny hair skimming strong shoulders. And he wanted her, wanted to belong to her. It was, to Lily, a fine, glittering miracle.
“Adam.” She sighed out his name as they lowered themselves to the bed. “Adam Wolfchild.” With the good, solid weight of him pressing her into the mattress, she wrapped her arms tight around his neck, drew his mouth down to hers. “Love me.”
“I do. I will.”
• • •
W HILE THEY CELEBRATED LIFE IN A SHADOWY ROOM. Another celebrated death in the daylight. Deep in the forest, alone and gleeful, he studied the trophies he’d so carefully arranged in a metal box. Prizes of the kill, he thought, stroking the long golden hair of a young girl who’d taken a wrong turn.
Her name was Traci; she’d told him when he’d offered her a ride. Traci with an I. She claimed to be eighteen, but he’d seen the lie in that. Her face was pudgy still with baby fat, but her body, when he took her into the hills later and stripped her, was female enough.
It had been so easy. A young girl with her thumb out along the side of the road. A purple knapsack slung over her shoulders, tight jeans showing off her short legs. And that bright gold hair, out of a bottle, of course, but it had gotten his attention, gleaming like gilded fire in the sun. Her fingernails had been painted to match the knapsack, a bright, unnatural purple.
Later, he’d seen that her toes were accented with the same color.
He’d let her ramble awhile, he remembered as he stroked the hair. Getting out of Dodge, she said, and laughed. That’s where she was from—Dodge City, Kansas.
“You’re not in Kansas anymore,” he told her, and nearly fell over laughing at
his own wit.
He’d let her ramble awhile, he thought again, about how she was going to work her way up to Canada, and see some of the world. She took gum out of her sack, offered him some. He found four neatly rolled joints in it later, but had she offered him any of that? No, indeedy.
He knocked her unconscious, one quick fist to the cheek that had rolled her eyes back white. And he took her up into the hills, to where it was quiet, and private, and he could do whatever he liked.
He liked to do quite a lot.
He raped her first. A man had his priorities. Tied her up good and tight so she couldn’t use those purple nails to scratch. She screamed herself hoarse, bucking and squiggling on that narrow cot while he did things to her, used things on her.
Smoked her pot and did it all again.
She begged and pleaded with him to let her go. Then she begged and pleaded some more when she saw he was going to leave her there, tied up and naked.
But a man had responsibilities, and he wasn’t able to stay.
When he came back, twenty-four hours later, he could have sworn she was happy to see him, the way she cried. So he did her again, and when he told her to say how much she liked it, she agreed that she had. She told him everything he wanted to hear.
Until she saw the knife.
It had taken him more than an hour to clean up the blood, but it had been worth it. Well worth it. And the best part, the very best part, had been the inspiration of dumping what was left of Traci with an I from Dodge City, Kansas, right at the doorstep of Mercy Ranch.
Oh, that had been sweet.
Tenderly, he kissed the bloodied hair, placed it carefully in the box.
They were all running scared now, he thought as he put the box back in its hole, rebuilt the small cairn over it. All of them trembling in their shoes. Afraid of him.
When he rose, lifted his face to the cold winter sun, he knew he was the biggest man in Montana.