He must have felt her withdrawal. He pulled back, his breath fanning her face warmly. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted both her hands to his face again and simply held him, her thumbs grazing his bristly jaw in small circles. She wanted to relish this . . . memorize it.
Except he thought she was someone else. She couldn’t shake the wrongness of that.
The table was tall enough that their faces were level. She lowered her forehead to his until their noses touched and lips brushed. Meanwhile his hands still kept their delicious hold on her hips, his thumbs hooked inside her panties, burning an imprint on her skin.
They had to stop. Or she had to come clean about who she was.
Either prospect turned her stomach.
The door to the boathouse suddenly creaked open, its oil-starved hinges groaning. “Cruz?” The door banged shut. “Cruz? You still in here? Where are you?” Natalie’s heels clomped over the floor as she walked deeper into the boathouse.
Cruz tensed, turning slightly away from her, in the direction of Natalie’s voice.
“Natalie?” he murmured, the bewilderment clear in his voice. His fingers fanned out on Gabriella’s hips as though assuring himself of her presence, that she was real . . . flesh and blood in his hands.
“Where are you?” Natalie sang out. “It’s so dark in here. Cruzie . . . are you hiding from me?” She giggled.
Cruzie?
Gabriella rolled her eyes.
His hands loosened on her hips and he stepped back. “Who are you?” he demanded. It might have been dark but she could feel the intensity of his stare on her.
She wasn’t about to be discovered. Not by Cruz. Not by Natalie. This would be her secret.
Rather than answer, she came to life, flying into motion. She jumped down from the table. She remembered enough of the boathouse to know there was another door at the opposite end of the building.
She took off, crying out when she slammed into the corner of a table. Biting her lip against the pain, she quickly shoved it aside and kept on going as though the hounds of hell were after her.
“Wait!” Cruz called after her, but she kept going, her legs pumping hard and fast. She could hear Natalie’s voice, too. She didn’t process the words, but they didn’t matter. She slammed out of the back door of the boathouse and ran up the hill toward the house, diving into the partygoers spilling out onto the lawn and losing herself in the crowd.
Natalie was with him now. The girl he wanted.
The girl he thought he’d held in his arms. Not her. Not Gabriella.
He’d forget all about the anonymous girl he’d kissed now that he had the one he really wanted.
Four
She hardly processed the ceremony happening around her. She was too caught up in memories of that night in the boathouse. She had trained herself not to think about it over the years. At least not a lot. She had succeeded. Mostly. It was her first kiss, after all, and still the best to date. Kind of pathetic, but there it was. The truth.
Cruz’s kiss was unforgettable.
She hadn’t seen Cruz since that night in the boathouse. Well, except for on the news.
When it came to light that he had been wrongfully imprisoned, they juxtaposed pictures of a young twenty-something-year-old Cruz with Cruz today . . . hardened, big-bodied, unsmiling but still mesmerizing as he walked out of the courthouse into broad daylight.
She’d watched that clip of him over and over, staring at his body. The lines of his face. She’d tried to read his expression, to get some idea of what he was thinking . . . of who he was now after seven years in a cage for a crime he didn’t commit. What kind of person did that make you? She wanted to know that and not for some interview. She wanted to know it for herself.
She shook off the troubling thought. She was never likely to know the real him, but seeing him again brought the night in the boathouse back with alarming intensity. His mouth. His hands on her thighs and hips. The shape and texture of his face under her palms. The velvet curl of his voice in her ear. His voice when he had pronounced that her body felt better than he remembered. Heat swamped her.
Applause shook her just as her memories threatened to suck her back under again. She pressed a hand to her overheated cheek and released a ragged breath.
The clapping subsided and everyone rose to their feet and started filing out of the auditorium amid rumbling conversation. She stood and hurried out of the large room before everyone exiting spotted her in the back. She definitely did not want that much attention.
Gabriella sped ahead to the cafeteria, hoping to take position in a corner where she could observe undetected. It was about more than avoiding Natalie now. She wanted to avoid Cruz, too. That seemed the most pressing concern at the moment. Avoid Cruz. No more encounters.
Adults and students flowed in a stream into the lunchroom and ebbed toward the table laden with refreshments.
Gabriella leaned against the wall near the door, unobserved. Nana Betty and Trent entered the room at a slow pace, moving right past her. She didn’t join them. Instead she shrank back. Anthony and Tess followed close behind them, and she felt no eagerness to mingle with her brother and sister. As two people prominent in the community, people flocked around them.
Her parents were there, too. Mom preened, reveling in the people, the attention gained through her important children. This was precisely the type of event she loved. An event where she got to showcase her family. She loved her high standing in the community, loved showing off her children and grandchildren. Dad, however, wore his usual expression, which translated to: how-soon-can-I-get-out-of-here-and-into-my-recliner.
Her niece, the reason they were here, stood off to the side chatting with friends who were also being inducted into the honor society. Gabriella sighed. She needed to make her way over to Dakota and congratulate her. It was the reason she came, after all. She could rationalize hiding from Natalie and Cruz and even her siblings, but she had to step forward to greet her niece at the very least.
“Still hiding in the shadows, Gabby? My, my . . . how some things never change.”
She tensed at the sound of Natalie’s voice. It was inevitable, she supposed. Once she’d been spotted, Natalie wasn’t going to let her slip away without a reunion.
She had to bite back the response she wanted to say. You’re right. Some things never change. You still manage to make all the old scars throb.
Fixing a smile to her face, she feigned nonchalance and faced her old nemesis. “And how are you, Natalie?”
“I’m great.” She nodded doggedly. “Wonderful. I’m married to Jack Brewster. Remember him? He was a year ahead of us. He’s an orthodontist. We live on ten acres and have two kids. My daughter Lily is an amazing gymnast. She’ll make cheerleader when she tries out in a few years, for sure.”
It was crazy. It was like she had no memory of the past. No memory of the bullying. No conscience at all.
Natalie’s grin turned blinding bright and she cocked her head at an angle. “Like mother, like daughter.” More laughter. “That’s what everyone says.”
“Lovely,” Gabriella returned, wondering how a simple “how are you” merited a highlights-of-the-last-decade reel. If this was the kind of thing she missed at her high school reunion, she didn’t miss anything at all.
“And what about you?” Her gaze flicked down to Gabriella’s bare wedding ring finger. “Still not married.” She tsked. “Such a shame.”
“I’ve always been career-minded. There’s still time for marriage . . . kids.”
Natalie wrinkled her nose. “Really? Is there?”
“Time enough,” she returned, her gaze flitting out to the cafeteria, searching for any excuse to break free of Natalie. For a reason to pardon herself without looking like a coward running away.
“If you say so.” Natalie’s skepticism rang ripe in her voice. “Just don’t wait too long. You’ll be one of those dried-up career women who have to go to a sperm bank when they’re
forty.” She whispered sperm bank and the word forty like they were something filthy on her tongue.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Oh! Would you look at that?” Natalie’s gaze drifted over Gabriella’s shoulder, widening in delighted disgust. “There’s your cousin’s killer, walking the streets bold as you please.”
Gabriella flinched, her gaze landing on Cruz as he entered the cafeteria alongside his two sisters and brother-in-law. His expression was like marble, revealing nothing. Not so much as a flicker of emotion crossed that brutally handsome face. Her lungs constricted, the air freezing inside as she devoured the sight of him.
He really was beautiful to behold. Other than the sheriff, who was hot in his own right, Cruz Walsh stood out in this crowd. He cast every man in the vicinity into shadow. The way his shirt settled against his chest, hugging well-formed pecs . . . the way his strong biceps peeked out from the short sleeves of his shirt. Her mouth went dry looking at him and her face flushed hot. She knew what that meant. All her freckles would be standing out against splotchy skin. Her reaction made her feel sixteen again . . . and she did not want to feel like a teenager again. Those had not been good years. She did not wish to relive them. Well, minus the kiss in the boathouse. That had been the one highlight.
With considerable effort, she tore her gaze from Cruz Walsh and looked around the room. Natalie wasn’t the only one staring. Several people paused amid conversations, watching him as he made his way across the cafeteria. He had to be aware of it. She wondered what that was like—to have everyone stare at you wherever you went. And not because you were someone famous like Brad Pitt. No, because they thought you were scum who had gotten away with murder.
Why had he stayed in Sweet Hill? He’d been out of prison for at least a year. Why hadn’t he moved away where he could start fresh? Well, fresher than here anyway. There might be a few people who would recognize him in Anytown, USA. He had been the subject of national news, after all. But he wouldn’t get near the amount of negative attention as he did here. And out in the world at large, people would generally believe in his innocence, unlike here where people only saw the stigma of his last name.
“Cruz Walsh was exonerated,” she reminded, her voice a little sharper than she intended.
Natalie rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Sure. But you remember him from high school. Did he ever strike you as innocent? C’mon. No way. That guy has blood on his hands, mark my words. Your poor cousin.” She shook her head as though saddened.
Gabriella rolled her eyes. Natalie didn’t know her cousin. She was several grades below them in school. Hell, Gabriella hardly knew her cousin. She’d been a pretty, popular girl, and as an only child, she’d been horribly spoiled by her parents.
When she was a teenager, Shelley Rae hardly ever attended family events with her parents. When they did manage to drag her, it was clear it was against her will. She pouted and plopped down in some corner with her nose buried in her phone. Whenever Gabriella tried to talk to her, she only got grunts and one-word answers.
Gabriella probably should just let the subject of Cruz drop, but she couldn’t. “He never struck me as a killer.”
Even when he was convicted of murdering her cousin, Gabriella had grappled with a sense of wrongness over it all. Deep inside she’d had her doubts, which had made her feel guilty because Shelley Rae was dead. Even though she hadn’t been particularly close with her younger cousin, it had crushed the family and she should have been loyal to Shelley Rae. Since all evidence pointed to Cruz—and he had confessed to the crime—she should have felt like everyone else. She should have wanted his head on a pike.
Instead she had wondered if Cruz had somehow been railroaded into confessing.
In her bones, she had felt like it all had to be a mistake.
She’d held her tongue, of course. The last thing she had wanted to do was upset her family more by voicing her unfounded theories. Especially since she couldn’t have been sure her theories weren’t fed by a long-nurtured crush.
Even in college, that crush had still been there, buried like a festering splinter she couldn’t claw out. She’d thought about him in her dorm room late at night, secure in her bed. She’d thought about him every time she kissed another boy.
Remembering him was easy. Forgetting less so.
When the news had hit that he was actually innocent, she’d felt relieved to know her judgment wasn’t so totally skewed. She might not have had great luck choosing men, but she hadn’t been totally off the mark with Cruz Walsh. He was no murderer. Her first crush and first kiss hadn’t been totally ill-bestowed.
Adolescent infatuation or not, he had been innocent.
Cruz Walsh was incapable of murder.
“Don’t tell me you believe he didn’t do it? He’s a Walsh, Gabby. Everyone knows they’re trash in this town.”
Everyone except the sheriff, she resisted sarcastically pointing out. Her gaze skipped to where he stood across the room, one hand resting possessively on the small of his wife’s back. His wife, a former Walsh.
She kept the observation to herself, instead saying with mock innocence, “Weren’t you and Cruz Walsh special friends? I’m almost sure that you and he . . .” She let her voice fade suggestively.
Natalie went still. All joviality fled her face and she more resembled the stone-cold bitch from high school that Gabriella remembered. “Well, you heard wrong. I don’t know who told you that, but I never associated with trash like Cruz Walsh.”
She flinched.
Natalie continued, “The guy is a criminal who deserves to be behind bars.”
“They wouldn’t have released him if that were true.”
Natalie did that annoying tsking sound again. “So naïve. Perhaps that’s why you haven’t married yet. All the city boys in Austin must play you. Take advantage of a . . .” Her gaze skimmed Gabriella. “Overweight, aging woman with no bank account to speak of if those shoes are any indication.” Natalie shook her head as though sympathetic. As though she had not just dealt an insult.
The woman hadn’t changed. This conversation was pointless unless she wanted to stick around and let Natalie offend her some more. “Ah, excuse me, I need to check on my grandmother.”
Natalie opened her mouth, but Gabriella turned away before she had to hear another word.
She ducked out into the hall, craving a moment to herself. She walked down the empty corridor lined with lockers and inhaled the nostalgia.
She paused in front of Mrs. Mooney’s classroom and peered inside the small window beside the door. Same desks arranged in a circle. Yearbook had been her favorite class. She smiled. At least all her memories in this place weren’t bitter ones.
She moved on and turned down another corridor until she arrived at her old locker. She brushed a hand over the cold metal door. She stood in front of it like she had countless times and glanced to the right. Exactly nine lockers down, separated by one classroom door, loomed Cruz’s old locker. She had spied on him beneath her lashes, acting as though she were searching for something in her locker.
Voices drifted behind her.
She stilled, listening. Damn. It was Natalie’s voice. “She went this way. Oh, you have to see her, Meredith. She’s the same ol’ Flabby Gabby.”
The air left her in a rush. She felt as though someone had just punched her in the gut. She shuddered and sucked in a bracing breath. Her mind tracked back. Meredith from high school—one of Natalie’s flunkies. Gabriella remembered her well enough and she had no desire to see her again.
Ah, hell. Didn’t they have anything better to do than look for her? Children to wrangle? Husbands to torment? Botox to inject?
“I heard she’s working at a coffee shop and living with her grandmother,” Meredith contributed gleefully. “So much for being salutatorian. Second in our graduating class got her nowhere, didn’t it?”
Meredith had been a cheerleader like Natalie. Also like Natalie, she loved to pick on the girls with less.
Less friends. Less popularity. Less. Period.
Nuh-uh. She wasn’t going to let the mean girls from high school have another go at her. She didn’t have to endure it anymore.
She took off at a light run, but the hallway was long and she could still hear them. The stretch of corridor seemed longer now than it ever had when she attended school here.
A door suddenly came into view on the right. Finally!
It wasn’t a classroom. It was windowless. She tried the handle and it gave easily, the door swinging open. Yes! She plunged inside.
Shutting the door, she collapsed back against it, breathing heavily, her heart beating hard in her chest, less from exertion and more from adrenaline.
She swallowed back a frustrated giggle. It really was absurd. She was running down the halls of her high school from former bullies and ducking into closets like it was some game of hide-and-seek. She should be beyond this.
Their chatter floated closer, carrying through the door. They were still out there, which meant she wasn’t going anywhere. She was stuck in—she glanced around to confirm her location—a storage closet. Various equipment occupied the space. Cleaning paraphernalia. A few old projectors. A podium.
She waited for the voices to pass. And then she waited a few minutes longer just to be safe. When they didn’t find her, they would probably circle back around. The last thing she needed was to be caught easing out of a storage closet.
Sure enough. Their voices soon returned, drifting past the door.
Then, after a while, nothing. Releasing a breath, she grabbed hold of the door handle and turned it.
Only it wouldn’t turn.
She froze a long moment, her heart seizing in her chest. Denial flashed hot through her. The knob wouldn’t give in her hand. She shook it and rattled it as her stomach plummeted to her feet.
Oh. God. Oh. God. NO. She was locked in. Stuck in a closet in her old high school. She dropped her forehead to the door. “Please. This isn’t happening. Not here.”
It took all of thirty seconds for her to debate whether or not she should make some noise to attract attention.
Beautiful Sinner Page 4