He cared for her in some slowly spiraling and inexplicable way, but he hadn't expected it to be returned. Not from her, not after all she'd been through at his hands.
"Catherine was having a fling," he said before he could change his mind. "An affair. Her third that I know of I went along with the smiles and congratulations just like she knew I would. She died before I could ask her if the baby was mine."
Chapter Eleven
Long after Chris had stunned her with the truth of the way things were between him and Catherine, Eden sat watching the rain patter against the window. He slept uneasily, but he slept. She had promised him she would not try to run away.
Why was it so hard to know the heart of another person? Of all people, Eden reflected, she should have known that things were not always what they seemed to be.
It had seemed to her that her mother had loved her. Her father had abandoned the two of them, sure, but she didn't think things had ever gotten so bad that her mother should have abandoned her, too. She had.
It had seemed to Eden many times between finding herself alone in the Boston Public Gardens and the time she went to work for Monique Lamareaux that no one was trustworthy, not the Sisters at St. Anne's, not the priest, not her classmates. Only Sheila Jacques had managed to worm her ~way through Eden's stiff defenses.
And it had seemed to Eden that Winston Broussard was trustworthy when he was not.
All delusions. But she'd made the mistake of placing herself at the center of the universe, believing she was the
only deluded one. That she was the only one who repeatedly failed to see into the dark motives of those around her.
So she had left that courtroom, done with the testimony that would put Broussard in a country-club prison for a minimum term. She'd rounded that corner in the federal building in Boston, frightened to her deepest he-ing. She was stiflingly familiar with being all alone. She knew the routine of being shuffled from one place to another, one so-called home to another, as well as she knew the North End streets and the cell-like room she had shared for four years with Sheila Jacques and two other girls.
Going off to a witness-protection reloeation seemed remarkably in keeping with everything she knew so well and hated so much. How to be alone.
Seeing in that moment what she imagined was an intensely joyous moment was in reality Christian Tierney making happy over a baby he wanted more than anything but knew in his heart was not likely his.
Lightning cracked again, so close the thunder reverberated within only a few Seconds. Eden'hunkered deeper into the massive chair. Chris kicked the comforter off and groaned in his troubled sleep. He lay there on the bed wearing only a pair of thinly striped boxers. Dark hair covered his legs and chest and jaw.
Eden swallowed. He attracted her. His high Slavic cheekbones gave him a haunted quality that spoke to her. As did his warm hazel eyes, his thick, overlY long black hair and eyelashes, even the stubble slashing across his angled jaw. H'm muscled shoulde~ and arms had both held her against her will and supported her when she would have collapsed.
She noticed 'now, when lightning pierced the dark, that his long legs were powerfully formed and his feet were as big as gunboats.
carry t~tsnop
Maybe it was because she'd been sick and delirious and sleeping so much, but he seemed almost like a figment of her imagination, a man her subconscious had conjured up to satisfy and tempt every feminine instinct kept so long under wraps inside her.
But she could no longer disown her attraction to Christian Tierney, or chalk it up solely to infatuation or a physical appeal. She trusted him. She believed what he said. She wanted him to kiss her as he had on the jet he had hijacked for only one reason--to save her life.
She knew very well that he intended to kill Winston Broussard and that he would not be dissuaded from trying. She understood his dark desire to take justice into his own hands because God's justice was just too slow. Broussard sold guns and bullets and had killed and would kill again. Would kill her.
But where she had failed to see Broussard's sullied, self-serving motives, she saw Christian Tierney's clearly. She knew his were somber reflections of a deeply honorable and truthful man betrayed by the woman he loved more than life and offended by the license of Winston Broussard to murder without answering for
She swallowed hard yet again, overwhelmed by Christian Tierney, by the man he was. She admired his strength, his kindness, his capacity to love too much, even the driven recklessness of what he stood for, the lengths he would go to stand up for someone.
To stand up for her.
The minute Chris had committed to protecting her from Broussard's paid assassin, his plans to use her for bait, to lure Broussard from his evil, protected enclave, had gone up in smoke.
Unless he was certain she was again alone, Broussard would not come after her himself. He was too much a Carly BlSttop coward, too arrogant and dependent on his hireling thugs to risk exposing himself. Chris would have to go after Broussard, only Chris wasn't a killer, so Broussard would win.
Chris would die.
She got up from the chair, suddenly aware of hunger pangs gnawing at her stomach. She stood for a while watching Chris Tierney thrashing now and again, softly snoring.
She straightened and gave a quick shake of her head. Her hunger wasn't only for food; she realized it was far more complex than that. So complex it was impossible. U. S. Deputy Marshal Christian X. Tierney was still in love with the woman who had betrayed him. And still determined to kill Winston Broussard.
She put the pillow back on the bed and tiptoed into the small kitchen. She found a can of hearts of palm, her favorite, and half a loaf of crusty French bread, but when she'd eaten it all only her stomach pangs were eased.
Rain poured down from the eaves, overflowing the gutters. Restless now, she spied her backpack on the floor by the bed and sank to the floor beside it to search through her things for the mirror Judith had given her. She needed to look into its glass and find herself, the woman who needed no man, who was capable and strong and getting stronger every day.
Groping blindly in the dark through the pack, she stabbed her hand on a shard of something horribly sharp. She smothered a cry and plucked out the mirror. More jagged shards spilled into her lap.
"Lightning crashed through the sky again and she saw what had happened. The butt end of a bullet protruded from the sculpted silver backing. The impact had shattered the glass. Judith's mirror had stopped the bullet, but it was ruined.
Judith's heirloom mirror.
Eden's throat closed and she began to shake. Blood dripped from the base of her thumb. Rage bit into her, then the memory came rushing back, the horror of the blow, its force knocking her into Chris as she clung to him on the back of his Harley. She clenched her teeth and forced herself to breathe, to think, to stay in control and be strong.
She had to get out of here. She had to escape Chris and find David Tafoya and get him to help her. Broussard would kill her, or he would kill Chris and let her live cause if he caught them together he would somehow sniff out that she was in love with Catherine Tierney's husband.
And he would know the worst he could do to her would be to let her live after Chris was dead.
She scrambled to her feet and shed the luxurious white terry robe with a savage, determined calm. She heard the steady downpour drumming over Chris's uneasy breathing She wouldn't look at him'. Couldn't--not if she wanted to leave him.
She never questioned the fact that she was in love with a man she had known less than seventy-two hours and under the ugliest conditions. She would trade her life to save his on the spot, which was all she knew and everything that mattered.
She sucked the blood from the base of her thumb and wrapped it in a dish towel from the kitchen. As quietly as she could manage, she pulled on her only pair of jeans and a cardigan she usually wore over something else. The stitches beneath her collarbone felt stiff and tight, but her skin was healing.
~ar~y B~st~op
The only other clothing in her backpack was an extra pair of socks. She yanked them on, then began to search for her shoes. She blinked back sudden hopeless tears when she realized Chris hadn't half trusted she would keep her promise. Or if he had, he'd already long since done something with her shoes to prevent her running away.
Panic gnawed at the edges of her determination. She took a deep breath and exhaled silently. Fear was good, panic was not. She had to keep herself under control or she would never manage this escape.
Where? Where would he hide her shoes? Maybe he hadn't hidden them at all Maybe they were in the car. Maybe she'd taken them off herself. She shook her head and made her way silently over the hardwood floor to the door leading outside from the kitchen.
The sound of the rain was so much louder, so much more intense when' she opened the door that she bit her lip 'and scooted through it before the noise awakened Chris. Shaking now, she almost tripped over her shoes, which sat alongside his boots on the stoop, protected from the rain.
She bent and started to put one on, then jerked it off and went back for her pack, for the shattered mirror that would serve as a constant reminder of what would happen if she didn't leave and leave now.
Crouched at the foot of the bed, she heard his troubled breathing. The scent of him on the bedclothes sapped her will to go. Her eyes darted to his powerful prostrate figure. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. Her lungs seemed not to work.
She wanted to stay.
She wanted to know, for once and the first time in her life, what it was to make love with a man. What it was to be in love with a man like Christian Tierney and what it was to have such a man in love with her.
But she could not indulge such fanciful and dangerous desires. Recklessness was in her now, too, and she would have made love with him whether he loved her back or not, but this' recklessness was born of needing more to do something, anything, to prevent him from putting himself in the line of fire again.
Winston Broussard would kill him.
Tears pricked at her eyelids. The thought of leaving him, of going it alone terrified her, but the consequences of staying terrified her more. She dared not risk another see-. ond of delay.
Her knees cracked when she arose. Holdlog her breath, praying Chris wouldn't wake, she grabbed up her clothes from the 'bathroom floor and stuffed them into her pack. She took several bath towels to cover her 'head and shoulders, then slipped through the back door again, this time closing it behind her. Sitting on the stoop, she put on her shoes and eyed the dark-colored Mustang.
Why hadn't she thought of it earlier? She didn't know. She clamped down hard on the temptation to go back and find the keys. Every moment she delayed, every chance she took digging through Chris's things to find the keys while he slept, was a gamble she couldn't afford. All she needed was to get to the road, hitch a ride to a telephone and put in her call to Tafoya.
A few hours at most. She couldn't hide in the car, and by now, the authorities must be on the lookout for it. "And if anyone knew to look for the Mustang, so did Broussard.
No. She would be far~ safer far more likely to make it on foot.
Ignoring the fact that she was weakened from hours in bed, from the blood loss and having eaten almost nothing, she stood, flung her pack on her left shoulder and the
~urty Dta'non towels over her head and shoulders, then plunged down the brick steps into the drenching rain.
She followed the heavily treed paved lane leading away from the house. Even though she kept to the side of the road under the partial protection of the trees, the going was brutal. Despite the barrier the leafy branches provided, the persistent downpour had saturated the grass and ground cover.
Every slippery, claustrophobic step~ defied her. Her heart pounded. Her calves burned. Thunder rumbled far away, but she could still feel the electricity in the air. Andswithin minuteS, the rain spilling through the cover of trees had drenched the towels covering her head. They became a leaden weight bearing down on her without giving her any protection,
She shivered hard, then cast them off and kept doggedly jogging.
Level for the first few minutes of her run, the grounds began to dip and climb in the rolling way of backwoods Massachusetts. Over and over again, she stumbled and fell, unable to see where she was going in the black night and dense; smothering rain.
Time and again,. she got up and pushed herself on. Her clothes were soaked and heavy with mud. Whatever advantage she might have had from living at a higher altitude had vanished with her blood loss.
She lost track of the road. It had to be to her right, didn't it? Yes. It must. It had to be. She hadn't crossed the pavement, so the road must still be to her right. But that was only if her co urge had followed the road. Confusion came close to overwhelming her. She felt panicky and uncertain, disoriented and perilously close to tears.
She pulled herself together with a jerk and plunged to her right, crashing through a tangle of brambles and undergrowth A deer star fled from behind her, bolting within a few feet of her. She cried out, then lost her footing and took a treacherous slide down the steep terrain toward a brook swollen now to the edges 'of its banks by the hours of rain.
The jarring slide knocked the breath out her but she fought back and managed to grab and keep hold of a small shrub, then pulled herself back up a few feet from the cresting, roiling brook and clung to the trunk of a young tree.
Shivering so hard that her teeth chattered, she wrapped her arms around the tree and rested her forehead against its smooth, wet bark. Soaked to the skin and badly battered by her fall, tears welled in her eyes, hopelessness in her heart, and she began to cry.
She badly needed a break, but the rain kept coming down hard. Shoving her dripping hair out of her eyes, she wiped her face with the soggy sleeve of her sweater and forced herself to buck up one more time.
The more ~hopeless things became, the harder she would fight. Grit filled her. She would not give up. It would take more than the wretched cold or rain or black of night or all the mud in the commonwealth to keep her down.
She would have to climb back up the bank,
Then she heard it, all but obliterated by the swollen brook crashing against its banks. The low thrum of a ear engine.
Her head came up, and she struggled to listen, to find its direction. A bird screeched and thunder rumbled far away, but she managed to hear the distinct sound of car tires splashing through the water on the road.
Relief coursed through her. She would make it now. Somehow, she would make her way to the roadside.
stood and turned. Almost blinding her, the rain fell in sheets over her face, but she ignored it. She was going to make it. Hand over hand, ignoring the now-familiar pain in her shoulder, clinging to undergrowth and branches, she scrambled up the steep incline.
She would have made it, too, but either she misjudged the ledge or it collapsed beneath her. As her feet slid out from beneath her, she fell hard to the ground on her stomach. Crying out in shock, she lurched for a handhold, missed and began to plunge down the treacherous bank again when something clamped hold of her.
A man's hand. Chris Tierney's hand.
She screamed and jerked hard but he kept a firm grasp and sank to his butt on the ground. Planting his feet against oak saings, he held on to her tightly enough to haul her back up the slippery slope between his legs. He had on nothing but his jeans and boots.
The solid, muscled wet wall of his chest mocked her heart. In the midst of the fiercest storm and black of night, in the midst of running from him so Broussard wouldn't kill him, all she wanted to do was give in to him and lay her head on his chest. Once: Just once. "Let me go!" she cried fiercely. "You promised, Eden."
Lightning split the sky again and thunder exploded, but neither matched the storm of fury in his eyes or the anger in his voice. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all and planted her hard on her backside with her body braced against a sturdy sapling.<
br />
His jaw went rigid. Steam rose from his back and shoulders. "You gave me your word."
Her heart hammered. "I changed my mind! Tierney, you have to let me go!"
"Tierney again?" he grated. "Lady, you are one cold-hearted selfish little bitch."
"You idiot... bastard... stupid man!" she cried. Rage tore through her, and lightning fast, she slapped his face. "Don't you dare judge me! Broussard will kill you," she shrilled, bordering so close to hysteria now that she hardly knew what she was saying. "He'll kill you!"
"No." He grabbed her wrist as fast, far more in control of himself than she was of herself, and he shook her. "No. He won't." His eyes glittered with a dark passion so furious it terrified her.
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