Gone (Deadly Secrets Book 2)

by Elisabeth Naughton

  He frowned because heading out into the cold to help a stranger at midnight wasn’t his idea of fun. Especially after the day he’d had. But considering he wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, there was no reason to sit here and be an ass.

  He shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed a jacket from the hook near the door, and shrugged it on. Buttoning his coat, he jogged down the rickety porch steps of the old farmhouse he’d bought a year before and hadn’t come close to renovating yet.

  The wind bit at his ears and neck, and he shrugged deeper into his coat as he crossed the front yard and headed down the short driveway. An engine revved a hundred yards down the road, and he looked up just as the driver overcorrected on the ice and slid into the ditch.

  “Son of a bitch.” He jogged along the snowy gravel on the edge of the country road. By the time he reached the car, his ears were frozen, his muscles tight, and he wished he’d stayed at that stupid party so he wouldn’t be out here freezing his ass off for someone he didn’t even know.

  He picked his way down the embankment. Luckily, the black Audi had been nearly stopped when it had slid off the road, so he didn’t expect the driver to be injured, just rattled. He knocked on the window. “Hey. You okay in there?”

  Long seconds passed, then slowly the window slid down, and he stared into Raegan’s nervous face. “Hi, Alec. Um, I’m okay. I think.”

  Shock gave way to irritation. “Holy hell.” He pulled the car door open and reached for her arm. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I was—” She grasped his forearm as she struggled out of the car, slipping in the snow and falling into him. “You left the party before I got the chance to talk to you.”

  He closed his hand over her other arm and shifted his weight on the hillside to pull her up beside him. “So you drove all the way out here in the middle of a snowstorm? That’s asinine.”

  Her trendy pumps slipped on the snow, and she almost went down, but he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her up against him.

  When they reached the roadside, she huffed and pushed out of his arms. “I wouldn’t have needed to come all the way out here if you hadn’t run.”

  “I didn’t run.”

  She brushed the snowy hair out of her face. “You sure didn’t let anyone know you were leaving.”

  Resting his hands on his hips, he glared down at her, the cold and snow and biting wind forgotten. “Who told you where to find me?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips, just as she’d always done when she was irritated with him.

  “Shit,” he muttered, knowing exactly who’d told her where to find him. “My money’s on my obnoxious therapist brother. He needs to learn to stay out of shit that doesn’t concern him.” He moved into the ditch again toward her car.

  “What are you doing?” she called.

  “Grabbing your stuff. You’re not going anywhere tonight.” He pulled her car door open again and leaned inside. “What else do you have in here besides your purse?”

  “Um, my laptop bag is in the back.”

  “Of course it is,” he muttered, grabbing the keys from the ignition and tossing the strap of her purse over his shoulder before slamming the door.

  He moved around the car, slipping twice in the snow and grabbing on to the car to keep from going down. Once he had her laptop bag out of the back, he slung the strap over his head and hiked back up to the road.

  “What about my car?” she asked as he grasped her elbow and ushered her away from the car toward the house.

  “It’s stuck until we can get a tow truck out here.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Aren’t you even going to lock it?”

  “Why? So vandals can trash it trying to get inside to search for anything valuable?”

  “Vandals?” She glanced around the snowy road. “Out here?”

  Frustrated she’d slowed her steps, he said, “Yes, even out here. Come on, already. It’s fucking freezing and I’d like to get inside where it’s warm.”

  She frowned but stepped forward. The heel of her pump slipped on the ice, knocking her off-balance. A yelp slipped from her lips and her hands flew up to stop herself as she went down.

  “Dammit, Raegan.” Alec tightened his hand around her upper arm and jerked her against him before she could hit the ground.

  Her heart raced beneath her thin trench coat. He felt it all the way through his thick winter jacket. And even through the layers of cloth between them, he could feel her heat, warm, enticing, calling to him in a way nothing and no one had called to him in a long-ass time.

  His pulse shot up, and sweat slicked his spine even in the cold night air. Pushing her away so their bodies were no longer plastered together from chest to hip, he kept his arm around her to make sure she didn’t go down again. “The house is right over there.” He pointed toward the glowing lights through the storm and started walking. “Just don’t take me down with you if you fall.”

  “I’ll try not to,” she muttered.

  Somehow, they made it back to his drive and up to the porch. Letting go of her as soon as they moved out of the snow, he shoved the door open and stepped inside.

  Raegan shook the snow from her hair and coat and followed him in. Then slowed her steps and said, “Wow.”

  He knew what she was seeing. The same thing he saw every day when he walked in. Bare floorboards, open walls he’d yet to close up after he’d had the wiring redone, a worn-out couch, and the only nice thing in the house—the river-rock fireplace he’d replaced as soon as he’d moved in.

  “You’ll have to ignore the mess.” He untangled himself from her bags and set them on the couch. “I’m in the process of remodeling.”

  She turned a slow circle in the living room, looking over the stack of hardwood in the corner he’d yet to lay and up the scuffed stairs that led to the even shabbier second floor. “No, it’s fine. How long have you lived here?”

  Shrugging out of his coat, he hung it on the hook near the door, desperate for space. “Just about a year.” He turned for the archway that led to the kitchen. “I’ll call you a tow truck.”

  The cordless sat on the counter under dinged-up white cabinets he couldn’t wait to rip out. Since he couldn’t count on cell service on a good day out here, and he knew the storm would only make that service worse now, he reached for the phone book from the drawer to look up the number for a tow. Just as he wrapped his hand around the book, the lights went out and the hum of the furnace clicked off, dousing the kitchen in darkness.

  He glanced toward the water-stained ceiling and then to the cordless on the counter. All he could see were shadows. One click of the phone illuminated the LCD screen and confirmed the cordless had battery life but no signal. “Shit.”

  “I think the power just went out,” Raegan said from the doorway behind him.

  Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.

  Fabric rustled at his back. “I still have some battery life in my cell.”

  “It won’t work.”

  She lifted her head as he turned, cell phone in hand, her delicate features illuminated by the soft blue light from her phone’s screen. “What?”

  “The signal’s spotty this far out. The whole area’s a dead zone. With the storm you won’t get anything.”

  Her cheeks paled as she checked her signal. Worry rippled over her face as she keyed into the reality that they were stuck together until the power came back on.

  He tried not to be disappointed by that reaction, told himself he didn’t want to be stuck with her either, but couldn’t quite shake the familiar emptiness growing wider inside him.

  Dammit. Why the hell had she come all the way out here in the first place?

  His annoyance increased by the second. Shoving the cordless back on its stand, he moved by her and pulled the cabinet open where he kept candles and flashlights. “Does your boyfriend know where you are right now?”

  “Alec, he’s not my—”

  He shot her a
look over his shoulder, and the words died on her lips. Just before her cell’s screen darkened he caught the guilt in her green irises. Guilt that only widened that emptiness inside until it was a vast canyon of nothing.

  “No,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Alec found a flashlight and checked the batteries. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled when he finds out.”

  Flicking the light on, he moved past her and back into the living room where he set the flashlight on the hearth and reached for more firewood to keep the fire going.

  “I’m sorry that I showed up here unannounced and put a crimp in your night,” she said from the kitchen doorway. “I just . . .” She sighed. “I wanted to make sure you were okay after everything that happened today. You left the party so fast, I . . .”

  The worry he heard in her voice caused a little of his irritation to ebb. She hadn’t come here to mess with his head as he wanted to believe. She’d driven all the way out here in a snowstorm because she cared. More than she still should for someone like him.

  “I’m fine, Raegan.” He tossed a log onto the fire and moved it with the poker. He’d put her through enough hell when they’d been married. He could be civil now. “And I’m not drinking, in case that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t even have anything in the house.”

  “No one would blame you if you wanted to. Not after this day.”

  He laughed, but the sound held no humor. “There are plenty of things you can blame me for. Not having alcohol on hand isn’t one of them.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Look.” He turned toward her, ready to be done with this conversation for good. “I appreciate the concern but I’m fine. I know Ethan probably made you think otherwise, but he’s just being his normal worrywart self for no reason. I’m not drinking, I’m not gonna drink, and I’m done discussing it, okay?”

  She studied him in the firelight for several long seconds, and even though her face was cast in shadows, he knew what she was looking for. Proof he really was sober, that he was telling the truth, that she’d come out here for nothing.

  The first he knew he could pass. His eyes had been clear ever since the day he’d awoken in that hospital with his family around him asking what the hell he’d been thinking. He hadn’t touched a drop of liquor since. But the second . . . telling the truth . . . he was sure she could see right through that like a veil.

  “Okay,” she said softly, breaking the eye contact and looking down at the floor.

  Okay. He exhaled, relieved they were off the subject of his addiction, but his heart rate still didn’t slow. Because now that they had nothing pressing to talk about, the awkwardness of the situation hit him full force.

  “It’s late.” He set the poker back in its holder. “I’ll grab some blankets so you can sleep on the couch. The power should be back on by morning. If not, the neighbor up the road has a truck we can use to pull your car out.”

  “O-okay.”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat. Remembered all the times they’d snuggled together in the dark on a makeshift bed of pillows and blankets in front of the gas fireplace in their city apartment when all he’d ever wanted was her. Now the thought of being alone with her, and the weight of everything he carried, made him want to run.

  “Okay,” he repeated as he headed out of the room. But it wasn’t okay. Nothing about the situation would ever be okay. And he had no one to blame for that but himself.

  Raegan’s stomach swirled with doubt and regret as she sat on the couch in the firelight and waited for Alec to come back downstairs with a blanket for her.

  She shouldn’t have come here. He didn’t want her around, and he definitely didn’t want to talk about the reason they’d crossed paths today. If she hadn’t been so emotional, or if she’d been thinking clearly at all, she never would have gone to his parents’ party. She would have stayed at dinner with Jeremy and accepted things the way they were. Then she would have soldiered on with her life like she’d done every day since she’d signed those divorce papers.

  Lifting her phone again, she checked the signal. “No Service” flashed in the corner. Frowning, she dropped her hands in her lap and sighed. Be tough. You can get through this. She could. She had before. She’d just have to do so again.

  Her gaze skipped over the table on the far side of the room. His oversized camera bag sat perched open on top, the strap of his expensive camera draped out over the wooden surface. He’d have at least three cameras in that bag, she knew. A dozen different lenses. Hoods. Soft cloths. A notebook and pen. All the things he used when he was working.

  She thought of the pictures he’d taken that she’d framed to hang on their walls. One was a sunset over the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Another was a young girl on the side of the road in Chile, covered in ash after Puyehue-Cordón Caulle erupted. His photographs captured life. Not the fairy-tale version of life everyone expected but the hard, brutal truth of it. His photos brought out emotion in every person who saw them, which was why she’d framed and hung them. It was also why she’d taken them down and put them in storage after he’d left. Because she’d already been dealing with so much emotion then, seeing the harsh reality of the world through his lens had been too much.

  It was still too much.

  The stairs creaked under Alec’s weight, and she looked in that direction, happy for the distraction from the memories. Seconds later he appeared in the low light carrying two blankets and a pillow, the muscles in his shoulders and arms flexing beneath his Henley as he moved. Her memories skipped quickly from photos to the feel of those strong arms surrounding her, closing her in, drawing her tight against all that masculine perfection. And just that fast, a resurgence of emotions tightened her throat, and her stupid heart tripped all over itself.

  “Here.” He leaned over the back of the couch and set the items on the cushion beside her. “These should be enough. I’ll come down and stoke the fire in a few hours to make sure it doesn’t go out.”

  When he turned back for the stairs, she realized where he was going.

  “Wait.” She grasped the back of the couch and twisted around. “There’s no heat in this house.”

  “You’ve got the fire, you’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, but you don’t. If it weren’t for me you’d sleep down here where it’s warm.”

  He gripped the scuffed banister at the base of the stairs. “I’ll be fine. I have blank—”

  “Alec.” She pushed to her feet and faced him. “It’s fifteen degrees outside, and judging from how cold it was in your kitchen, I’m guessing this old house doesn’t have much insulation. You’ll freeze upstairs with no heat.”

  “I’ll be—”

  “Fine. Yeah, you already said that.” God, he could be so damn stubborn. She’d once found that endearing, especially when his stubbornness involved his wanting to spend time with her. Now it just made her want to pull her hair out. “If you’re going to be a jackass about it, I’ll just go sleep in my car.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Don’t you be stupid.”

  He pursed his lips and scowled.

  “This room’s plenty big enough for the both of us,” she said, ignoring the look. “I’ll take one end of the couch, and you can have—”

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You’re not gonna quit with this, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Pain in my ass,” he muttered. Then, “The power will probably be back on in an hour or so anyway, and we can call that tow truck.”

  Did that mean . . . ?

  “Fine, I’ll stay down here,” he finished. “But on the floor. You get the couch. No arguments.”

  Relief whipped through her, but it quickly faded to a whisper of unease when she realized they were going to spend the night together in the same room. Something they hadn’t done in over three years.

  “I’m gonna grab some pillows and blankets for myself,�
� he said, shooting her a look as he headed back up the stairs. “I hope that’s allowed.”

  His familiar sarcasm calmed her rattled nerves. But alone, as she looked over the hard subfloor in front of the fireplace and wondered how he was going to get any sleep there, she knew those nerves wouldn’t stay calm for long. Because even after everything that had happened between them, she was still crazy about this man who clearly didn’t want anything to do with her. And that meant she might as well be the one lying on that hard floor, because there was no way she was getting any sleep in this room with him tonight.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hours later, the snow hadn’t stopped and the power still wasn’t on. Alec couldn’t sleep, and it didn’t help that the floor was hard as rock or that every time Raegan shifted on the couch feet away and grunted with the movement, images of the two of them wrapped around each other in bed flashed behind his eyes, bringing his senses even more awake.

  “You’re gonna wear a divot in my cushions if you don’t stop flopping around,” he said, staring at the shadows dancing over the ceiling from the fireplace, knowing there was no use even trying to sleep now.

  She stilled. “Am I keeping you awake?”

  “Just a little.”

  “Sorry. I guess I’m not as tired as I thought.”

  Neither was he. Not even close.

  Several awkward beats of silence passed, then she said, “So Ethan’s fiancée seemed nice.”

  Fabulous. She wanted to talk about his family. He was tempted to roll away from her and feign exhaustion but knew he could never pull it off.

  “Yeah, Sam’s pretty great.”

  “How long have they been together?”

  “A couple months.”

  “And they’re already engaged? Wow, that’s fast. And your parents are okay with that?”

  “Yeah, they like her.”

  “I see,” she said quietly.

  He knew what she was thinking. That his parents had not been so okay with the two of them getting married so quickly after meeting. But their reaction to the news had nothing to do with her and everything to do with him. His parents had always thought he was too impulsive. As a teenager, when he’d wanted something, he’d gone for it, and more often than not, that impulsivity had come back to bite him in the ass. Years later, as an adult, when Alec had told them Raegan was pregnant and that they were getting married, they’d seen his decision as impulsive yet again. It hadn’t been, though. He’d been planning to propose to Raegan before she’d even told him about the baby. If it hadn’t been for one horrible moment in a park he’d wished a thousand times he could redo, he’d have proved his parents wrong by still being married to her.