by Gina Wilkins
Lucas and Blake knelt beside her. Lucas heard Wade talking to Sam Jennings, who’d gone very still and quiet, obviously realizing that he wouldn’t be able to get away unscathed now.
“Are you all right?” Lucas asked, looking deeply into Rachel’s dark, stunned eyes.
She nodded, a tear trickling down her right cheek.
“Let me get this off you, sweetheart,” Blake murmured, taking hold of one corner of the tape across her mouth. “I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
Satisfied now that Rachel was safe, Lucas started to rise. “Take care of her, Blake. I want to have a talk with her uncle.”
His fists itched to make Jennings pay for that bruise on Rachel’s face. For the fear in her eyes.
Reading his intentions in his face, Rachel made a muffled sound of distress, reaching for him with her bound hands.
He hesitated, his gaze locked with her pleading one. And then he sighed and took her hands in his. “All right. We’ll let the law take care of him,” he muttered reluctantly. “Let’s get rid of this tape.”
“Thank you,” she whispered as soon as Blake had freed her mouth.
Lucas cupped a hand behind her head and kissed her, mindful of the raw, bruised skin around her mouth, utterly heedless of his audience.
12
LUCAS WAS SITTING in his kitchen drinking coffee at five o’clock the next morning. He was trying to be quiet, since Emily, Wade, and Clay were all still sleeping. Lucas hadn’t slept more than an hour all night.
He’d been so badly shaken by how close he’d come to losing Rachel that he was just now breathing normally again.
He loved her now as deeply as he had fifteen years ago—more, since he loved now with the intensity and complexity of a man’s heart, not a boy’s. And he knew that the man’s heart was every bit as vulnerable as the boy’s had been.
Things were far from settled between them, he thought, sipping his cooling coffee. There were plenty of strikes still against them. Local gossip would fly fast and furious once word got out of Sam Jennings’s arrest. Would Rachel’s mother unfairly blame Lucas for striking the final blow to the Jennings family?
At least Lucas hadn’t killed Rachel’s uncle—and he was uncomfortably aware of what a close call that had been.
He knew Rachel was a grown woman, that she’d been making her own decisions for a long time, but was she really ready to choose him over her only remaining family? Especially when they had been reunited for just less than a week, and a traumatic week at that.
Everything had happened so fast. So intensely. He didn’t want her decisions influenced by volatile emotions—especially gratitude. If she said she loved him now, only to change her mind when she’d had more time to think about what she was doing—well, he didn’t know if he could say goodbye to her again.
He had to give her time. He had to know, this time, that things wouldn’t end badly. He had to be sure.
RACHEL WAS WELL AWARE of just how closely disaster had been averted Saturday evening. She didn’t want to think about what her uncle might have done to her, had Lucas and the others not found her in time. And she didn’t want to think what Lucas might have done to her uncle, had she not managed to calm him down.
Lucas McBride still had a fiery temper, she realized. He’d learned to control it, but it still simmered in that rebel heart of his. She knew without a doubt that he would never turn that temper against her. But he would always be willing to fight for the people he cared about.
She had known fifteen years ago that she had fallen in love with a dangerous man.
After all that time, some things hadn’t changed.
By noon on Sunday, the gossips of Honoria were having a field day. A steady stream of visitors came by Rachel’s grandmother’s house on the pretext of offering sympathy and support, when many of them just wanted the juicy details of the latest McBride-Jennings scandal. Though the truth was bizarre enough, it was still embroidered in the retelling Rachel heard. Rumor had it that guns had been drawn. Shots fired. Bodies found. That Chief Davenport and Tara McBride’s dashing P.I. husband had barely prevented Lucas from killing Sam Jennings.
With startling small-town fickleness, some people had transformed Lucas from a shadowy murderer suspect into a bold, bad-boy hero who had come home to protect his sister and had daringly saved Rachel’s life. And it didn’t hurt his standing in the community that word had leaked out about the sizeable fortune he’d made with his own computer company. Wealth and success had an amazing way of polishing a tarnished reputation.
Some correct information was also distributed. Sam Jennings had been arrested for assault and battery and the subsequent imprisonment of his niece. He was being questioned in connection with the break-in and assault on Emily McBride several months earlier. There were also questions about whether he’d been involved in the disappearance twenty-four years earlier of his brother Al and Al’s lover, Nadine Peck McBride. It was even possible, some whispered, that Sam had pushed his nephew to his death.
Rachel’s grandmother had been so upset that she spent most of Sunday in bed, recuperating. Rachel’s mother, Jane, became completely hysterical when Rachel tried over the telephone to discuss what had happened. She sounded almost as disturbed by the news that Lucas McBride had rescued Rachel as by everything that Sam had done.
“So she would rather have had you die in that car trunk than to have me be the one to find you there?” Lucas asked when he called just after her difficult conversation with her mother Sunday afternoon.
“No, not quite that bad. Mother just didn’t know you and I were dating before Roger died and it was a shock for her to find out we’ve been seeing each other again while I’ve been back in town. Don’t forget, for the past fifteen years she’s considered you a suspect in her son’s death—thanks, in part, to Sam’s blaming you so adamantly,” she added bitterly.
She and Lucas hadn’t had much chance to talk after he’d pulled her out of her car. Dazed from the shock of everything that had happened to her—as well as from the blow that had rendered her unconscious long enough for Sam to bind her and stuff her into her trunk—she hardly remembered anything that had happened after the rescue. Lucas had insisted on taking her to the emergency room of the nearest hospital, where she’d been examined and released, and then he’d brought her to her distraught grandmother, where he’d left her to rest. She knew he’d gone straight to the police department when he left her, wanting to know exactly what penalties Sam would pay.
“Has my uncle talked?” she asked Lucas, clutching the receiver in a hand that was suddenly unsteady.
“Not much,” Lucas replied, his voice grim. “Wade can’t even get him to admit now that he stuffed you into your car trunk—though, of course, he won’t get away with that one.”
“No, he won’t,” Rachel agreed, her voice hard. “Was any other evidence found to connect him with my father? Or with Roger?”
“Wade found some letters Sam had stashed away. Several were from Nadine—steamy love letters, a few containing hints for gifts or money. Some were written before her marriage to my father... and the rest were written afterward.
Rachel gasped. “Nadine was seeing both my uncle and my father after her marriage?”
“Apparently.” Lucas sounded utterly disgusted with his stepmother’s behavior. “Sounds as if she was playing them all for fools. And it’s pretty obvious that Sam, for one, was obsessed with her.”
“Do you think Roger found out?”
“Wade also found a letter Roger wrote to Sam a few days before he died telling him the same theory Roger had given me—that my father was a murderer. In the letter, he told Sam he’d found the bracelet and Al’s wallet and that he was going to be spending a lot of time looking for more evidence. He said he wanted it in writing in case anything happened to him—he apparently thought either my father or I would be a threat to him.”
“Where was the letter found?” Rachel asked, stunned by the implications. “Why on earth wou
ldn’t Sam have destroyed it?”
“It was in small safe hidden in one of Sam’s closets. Apparently, Sam thought it might be useful against the McBrides someday. Remember, it implicated my father, not Sam.”
“But my father’s car was in his garage.”
“He told Wade Al gave it to him before he left.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Neither do I. Not considering everything else we’ve found. The bracelet is going to be hard for him to brush off. Wade recognized it immediately, as you did. Emily will identify it as the one she was wearing when she was attacked.” Lucas paused. “Wade and I looked very closely at that bracelet last night, after I took you home. There was something about it none of us had noticed before.”
“What?”
“That heavy oval clasp—it had a hidden latch. When pressed, the clasp opened. Like a locket. Since Emily had only worn it a few weeks before it was stolen from her, she’d never discovered the mechanism.”
Rachel held her breath as she asked, “What was inside?”
“An engraved inscription. Faint, but still readable under a magnifying glass. ‘To N. from S. Mine forever.”’
“Mine forever,” Rachel whispered. “It makes jealousy sound more than ever like a motive, doesn’t it?”
“Could be that he managed to deal with her leaving him for Josiah. But finding out that she was having an affair with his own brother sent him over the edge.”
“Lucas—” Rachel moistened her lips. “Do you think we’ll ever know for certain what happened to my father and your stepmother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Sam will eventually talk. He’s hardly stable—and everything that happened yesterday has shaken him badly.”
“He didn’t want to kill me. The only thing he said to me before he hit me was that he was tired of hurting his family.”
“He’s almost destroyed his family,” Lucas answered grimly.
Rachel had to agree. If everything they’d come to believe about Sam was true, he’d murdered his own brother and nephew, had caused his sister-in-law to become a neurotic mess, and had almost killed his niece. If it had been Sam’s intention to ruin the McBrides, he had failed. The McBrides were thriving. The Jennings family was broken.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Lucas said, as if he’d followed her thoughts. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”
“And you didn’t deserve to be labeled a murderer,” she replied. “Sam has caused so much pain for both our families. He should pay.”
“One way or another, he will.”
“Lucas—” She frowned, not trusting his tone. “Promise me you’ll stay away from him. Whatever happens with the legal system, swear to me you won’t try to take the law into your own hands.”
“He almost killed you.” The barely suppressed fury sizzled through the telephone line, almost burning Rachel’s fingers.
“Promise me, Lucas,” she said steadily. Firmly.
He grumbled. “I’ll leave him alone. Unless he ever bothers you or my sister again. And then all promises are off.”
“Thank you. That’s as much as I can expect, I suppose,” she said wryly.
It was sort of like being in love with a Doberman pinscher, she reflected. He was utterly loyal to those he protected, but beware to anyone who threatened them.
“You’re doing okay? You aren’t having any problems from the blow to your head?”
She shook off the image and replied, “No, I’m fine. Will I see you tonight?”
There was a pause. And then, “You should probably get some rest this evening. And I’m sure your grandmother needs you.”
Rachel began to frown. Something in Lucas’s voice put her on alert. “And what will you be doing this evening?”
“I’ll have dinner with Emily, Wade and Clay—and then I thought I’d head back to California. There’s a flight leaving Atlanta at midnight. All I have to do is turn in the rental car and...”
“You’re leaving?” Rachel interrupted in disbelief. “Tonight?”
“Emily has a lot to do during the next week. She’s getting married Friday evening. She doesn’t need me underfoot.”
“You know very well that Emily wants you at her wedding and that she does not see you as a burden in any way. Why are you leaving, Lucas?”
“It just seems best. Everyone in town is talking about the McBrides again. I don’t want to turn the wedding into a circus.”
“I don’t believe that. What are you running from this time, Lucas?” She didn’t even try to keep the anger out of her voice.
“I’m not running. I said all along that I would only stay through Christmas, and that’s what I’ve done. I also promised I wouldn’t leave this time without saying goodbye.”
“So that’s why you called? To say goodbye?”
“And to make sure you’re all right.”
“How very kind of you.”
Her sarcasm must have hit home, but he went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’m leaving my address and telephone number with Wade and Emily. Wade will bring them by to you, if you’re interested.”
“Mmm.” She was so angry she felt as if she could snap the telephone receiver in half.
“You’ll know where I’ll be, if you ever want to talk, or visit California—or whatever,” he finished, sounding uncharacteristically awkward. “This doesn’t have to be a permanent goodbye—unless you want it to be.”
She didn’t reply.
“Rachel?”
“You, Lucas McBride, are a coward,” she informed him coolly. And then she slammed down the receiver.
She had almost forgotten in her fanciful imagining earlier that ferocious guard dogs sometimes turned unexpectedly against the people they were supposed to protect.
AN HOUR LATER, Lucas still felt as if his ear was ringing from that crashing disconnection. Rachel had been furious with him—that was easy enough to figure out. What he couldn’t quite understand was what she had really expected.
He stood alone in the rock house, leaning against a wall and staring morosely out the window opening that faced the bluffs, contemplating Rachel’s reactions.
It wasn’t as if he’d disappeared without a word again. After all that had passed between them, he could understand why that would make her angry. But he’d called to tell her his plans, and even offered his address and phone number. What more did she want from him?
It seemed he was about to find out.
“Hiding, Lucas?”
Frowning, he turned to find Rachel standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her brows drawn into a frown. “How did you know I would be here?”
“I didn’t. I went to Emily’s house first. When she said you’d taken a walk before dinner, I knew where to find you.”
Her face was still pale, he noted in concern. The bruise at her temple looked dark and painful against her skin. The sight of it brought back the murderous rage he’d felt when he’d found her in the trunk of her car yesterday. If Sam Jennings had been within reach, Lucas couldn’t have guaranteed that he would keep his promise to Rachel not to smash the bastard’s face in.
He’d thought it would be easier to leave if he didn’t see her again. Otherwise, he might not be able to give her the time he believed she needed before she made any major decisions. Looking at her now—so pale, and yet so beautiful, so vulnerable, and yet so ferocious—all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and never let her go.
He’d been right to try to stay away from her.
“Why did you come?” he asked, pushing his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket to keep himself from reaching for her.
“I have a few things to say. And I want to be looking at you when I say them.”
“Rachel...”
She dropped her hands from her hips and stepped toward him. “Do you know what you did to me fifteen years ago? You broke my heart. No, you didn’t just break it. You shattered it.”
“I told you, Rachel. I didn’t sleep w
ith Lizzie. I didn’t...”
“Yes, you told me. Fifteen years later. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“You wouldn’t talk to me.”
“You called me one time, nearly two months after my brother died—during an evening when my mother and grandmother were there to hear every word I might have said to you. If you had really wanted to talk to me, you would have made more than that token gesture.”
He was beginning to feel defensive. He drew his jacket more closely around him. “You knew where to contact me, if you’d wanted to.”
“For all I knew, you were spending all your time with Lizzie! How was I to know differently?”
“You could have trusted me,” he snapped back. “For all I knew, you thought I had killed your brother.”
“So why didn’t you tell me you didn’t?”
“I shouldn’t have had to tell you. You should have known me better.”
“As it happens, I did,” she answered quietly. “I never for one moment thought you had anything to do with Roger’s death.”
She’d told him that before. He wasn’t sure he’d fully believed it—until now.
“Rachel...”
She jabbed a finger into his chest. Painfully. “You ran. You decided I’d judged you, just like the rest of the town, and instead of staying to convince me differently, you took off. You asked me to marry you, Lucas! And I said yes. I asked if we could wait until I finished college, and you said that wasn’t a problem, that you needed time to find a better job than that one you had then. You said you would wait. But you left.”
Her finger was nearly digging a hole in his chest. Lucas reached up to catch her hand, holding it firmly, but carefully.
“I was doing you a favor, damn it. Even if you didn’t think I was a killer, the rest of your family sure as hell did. More than half the town did. We couldn’t have kept seeing each other without someone else finding out. I couldn’t stay here with everyone believing what they did about me, my father refusing to have anything to do with me, my sister being penalized just for being related to me. I had to leave. I couldn’t take you with me, even if you’d wanted to go. I had no job, no home, nothing. You were too young to be put into that position. You deserved more.”