by Lora Leigh
Rafe grunted behind her, watching the slender, graceful curve of her back as she moved from the bed.
She was just damned determined to piss him off, and if he was honest with himself then he admitted she was getting close to that edge.
It wouldn’t be pretty once he let that anger build inside him. He’d pushed those emotions back in his teens, determined to never let them free again. He’d fought his last battle when his Clyde had died and Rafe had realized how many friends the man had lost when he had taken in the three orphan cousins when no one else would have them.
“You know, kitten, you amaze me,” Rafe drawled. “You lay in this bed with that little toy of yours, fighting to get off, knowing damned good and well that it’s my dick you’re fantasizing about, and still, you’re determined to run my ass off. I’d like to understand the logic behind that one.”
There it was. The anger was beginning to simmer inside his chest.
“You know the logic behind it, Rafer.” Soft, filled with an anger he couldn’t help but acknowledge.
She kept her back to him, drew the silky robe over her naked body before quickly belting it. “You simply refuse to accept it. Why should I fight this alone when you refuse to even acknowledge it? When you don’t even give a damn about what’s happening around you or why?”
“Acknowledge what? That you need everyone else to approve of who you’re sleeping with?” He slid her a hard look, determined to hold back the years of resentment and anger that had once been buried. He refused to allow her to resurrect them.
He stared up at the ceiling for a long moment before rolling from the bed himself and jerking his clothes off the floor. He’d be damned if he was going to fight with her over this. It simply wasn’t worth it and reminded him far too much of the arguments he had with her sister the summer she had been killed.
Why the hell did they insist on attempting to tie together events that even he and his contacts couldn’t prove had a connection? And they were the ones who had fought that battle all their lives.
No matter how hard they had tried, they couldn’t find a single piece of evidence to link their parents’ or their grandparents’ deaths. And God knew they would have loved to.
Socks and jeans were pulled on quickly before he sat on the bed and shoved his feet into his boots. Rafe straightened again, collected his shirt from the chair where it had fallen and pulled it over his shoulders as well.
All the while, he was aware of her watching him, her eyes sheening with tears every few minutes before she blinked them back.
“You’re a coward, Cami,” he finally told her as he secured the buttons of his shirt. “A damned little coward that would cut her own nose off to spite her face if it meant her daddy wouldn’t get mad at her. If it meant he would love her.”
She turned away from him, hiding the truth from him, he thought, knowing that was exactly why she wanted him out of her bed after he fucked the want out of her.
God forbid her daddy should find out about it, Rafe thought furiously.
“You won’t even try to fight against the Corbins or to understand why they want you and your cousins out of this county so badly,” she argued fiercely.
“Oh hell, yes, I do know why.” He gave a bark of mocking laughter. “The inheritances our mothers left us were far more important to those bastards than the grandchildren those daughters left. Especially grandsons that looked too much like their hated Callahan fathers.”
“Then tell me why Marshal Roberts grieved for you?” she asked him, burying the knife that was the past deeper inside his soul and twisting it cruelly. “Why, Rafer, did he show up on my doorstep at a time he would be least noticed to attempt to warn me of something more than his wrath if I continued to see you?”
“Because he’s a smart, manipulative, evil old bastard, and if he died tomorrow I wouldn’t shed a tear for him,” he growled, wondering himself if that were even true.
“Or is it because you’re too damned scared to know the truth? All three of you are,” she accused.
She didn’t know the effect that accusation had on him. She couldn’t have known the bitterness that filled him, Logan, and Crowe, or the questions that haunted them as well. Questions they had no hope of finding because those with the answers were dead.
“There’s not a damned thing I’m scared of in this county, Cami,” he informed her furiously as he stared at her back, watching as her shoulders tightened, as she refused to turn back to him.
“I really don’t want to discuss this with you any longer,” she informed him, her voice low as he stood watching her, the fact that she had her back to him bothering him more than he wanted to admit. “I have things to do in the morning, Rafer, and I don’t have time to deal with you before I leave.”
And she sure as hell didn’t want anyone to know he was here, he thought mockingly. God forbid someone on her street would actually realize she was screwing one of the Callahan cousins.
Son of a bitch if he wasn’t sick and damned tired of dealing with this bullshit with every lover he’d had. He’d thought Cami, with her fire, her restless courage, and warmth would have cared more about whatever they could feel growing between them than whether or not her daddy approved of her lover.
“Do you think I don’t get damned tired of this, Cami? Why don’t you just admit to the fact that you’re so damned scared of daddy finding out you’re fucking his daughter’s killer that you’ll come up with any excuse to put a wedge between us?” he snapped furiously. “And the least you could do is turn around and face me, damn you!”
She shook her head furiously, her hand lifting in rejection, and in that moment, he knew she was crying.
Damn her. He didn’t want to see her tears. He didn’t want to see the hurt in her eyes, or the pain that drifted down her cheeks.
His Cami should never cry. And especially not because of him.
The knowledge of those years was like a dagger shoving inside his gut. Why would she care? For God’s sake, nothing was going to change the past, nothing would ever affect the barons until he, Logan, and Crowe established the vengeance they’d returned home to put in place.
Striding across the room, he gripped her shoulders, pulling her around as he gripped her chin with one hand and lifted her face to see it in the low light on her bedside table.
And she was crying.
Silent, miserable tears washed over her cheeks and dripped down her face to her neck. Her gray eyes were dark, filled with pain, and silently begging him for something he didn’t know how to give her.
“You need—” Her voice hitched. “You need to leave.”
She tried to pull away from him, to hide her tears from him again.
“And you’d rather stand here with your back to me and cry than fight for a damned thing you want. And you have the nerve to berate me?”
He released her slowly.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she cried out roughly. “I haven’t cared what Daddy thought since the day I realized he was moving the family to Aspen the summer I graduated. And I wasn’t invited,” she sneered tearfully. “You know Rafer; you should give your grandfather more credit. Because the two of you are more alike than you could ever know.”
“Oh, baby, trust me, I’ve heard that accusation more times than you could ever throw it at me.”
He released her quickly before striding a few steps away from her. “At least I’m willing to admit to it. I know damned good and well that I could be a clone of that old bastard. But you, Cami?” He flicked her an angry look. “You won’t even admit to the fact that the only reason you’ve slipped out of my bed at dawn and run like a scared cat over the years is because you didn’t want that son of a bitch father of yours to know who you were screwing.”
He couldn’t get around her. He couldn’t touch her because he didn’t trust himself. Because he was getting hard. He was so damned ready to fuck her again he couldn’t stand it. And how much sense did that make?
She had him so mad he could probably bite nails in half, and what was his response? A fucking hard dick and a need to push her over the bed and fill the liquid heat of her pussy with every throbbing inch of it.
“You think you just know it all,” she bit out, the anger suddenly pouring through her, filling her voice, roughening it as her gaze flickered with the same aroused rage.
God, she was getting just as hot, filling with the same fiery blast of lust that he could feel striking at him.
“That son of a bitch father as you call him probably couldn’t care less who I was fucking,” she suddenly yelled back at him. “I’m so low on his fucking radar these days that he only calls me when he needs my signature at the nursing home to authorize payment for medical care. To see her, I have to pay for the expenses her medical insurance doesn’t. Other than that, I’m lucky if I get to see my mother at all, and I sure as hell don’t care what my so-called father thinks.”
Hell, he hadn’t known that. He couldn’t imagine the anger Jaymi would have felt if she had known how their father was using his youngest daughter.
“He didn’t even care when—”
He watched her face suddenly pale.
Her lips clamped closed as she turned quickly away from him once again and pushed her fingers through her hair before clenching the strands in a gesture of pain and rage.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed on her.
“When what, Cami?” he asked softly. “What happened that he didn’t care?”
He could feel a hard, tight ball of suspicion forming in his gut that Cami was hiding something from him. He’d always known when she was hiding something. It seemed even when she was a teenager, before Jaymi’s death, he’d known how to read her much easier than any other female he’d known.
She had been a bright, curious teenager with what he had believed was no more than a strong crush. He’d never imagined in those days that he would end up wanting her more than he wanted air to breathe at times. Or that she would become as vital to him as he could sense her becoming.
Watching her, touching her, seeing her laugh and even cry were experiences he hungered for when it came to Cami.
“I don’t want to talk about this any further,” she told him, her expression closed and tight as she all but glared back at him over her shoulder. “It’ll be dawn soon, Rafer, and you really need to leave. There’s nothing going on, and there’s nothing wrong except the fact that I really don’t want to deal with the aggravation for a man who even refuses to see the danger that’s chasing him. Not to mention the danger chasing his lovers. I have enough problems.”
She had enough problems?
And she was lying to him. What the hell was going on besides those fucking phone calls?
Whatever it was, she had no intentions of telling him. He could see it in her closed expression, in her eyes, which despite the tears were filled with steely determination.
Damn her, he hated it when she lied to him.
His lips tightened as his head jerked up, nostrils flaring in anger.
As if he were going to just walk away after learning some bastard was calling her, threatening her. If he’d known Jaymi had been receiving such calls, he would have ensured she was protected better. But he hadn’t. He couldn’t bring her sister back for her, but he could do everything in his power to make damned sure that no one dared to hurt her as they had hurt her sister.
He would leave now. Not because she didn’t want anyone to see him, because he was suddenly aware if he was seen, then catching the mysterious caller could become that much harder.
“Yeah, just let me get my ass out of here before someone sees who’s slipping out of your house at night and most likely fucking your brains out every chance he gets,” he snorted, his pride still smarting at the fact that she wanted him to leave, despite the fact that he needed to go. “And when you decide to be a woman willing to face me with the truth of whatever you’re hiding, why don’t you just let me know? Because I’ll be damned if I’m going to get down on my knees and beg you for it, Cami. You’re going to have to be woman enough to admit you want it.”
He turned, grabbed the jacket that had fallen to the floor earlier, and stalked from the bedroom.
He hadn’t really believed she would be so stubborn as long as he attempted to ensure no one saw him coming and going. He’d thought he could have her, tease her, and charm her. That there was something burning between them, unresolved and waiting to blossom into something they could have both found some peace within.
It seemed he would never learn. There was no peace to be found in Corbin County. And there was no love, no respect, and no hunger strong enough to combat whatever Cami suddenly found herself frightened of or fighting against. Or was there?
He’d damned sure be finding out what that “something” was, though. Who was calling Cami and threatening her over the relationship developing with Rafe? Or any of the other women who had been involved with the Callahan brothers? What was going on that none of them was aware of?
Perhaps he should have questioned it sooner. Even more, perhaps Cami was right. Because Jaymi wasn’t the only woman who had died that summer who had been involved with the Callahan brothers. There had been one other. And that one had been planning to meet with Crowe to give him something, a picture she thought he would want to see.
The next time Crowe had seen her, though, she had been a picture in the paper, the latest victim of the Sweetrock Rapist.
As he slipped from the house, Rafe decided it was time to start questioning the past himself.
CHAPTER 12
Three weeks. Cami waited three weeks for Rafer to return. For him to come back to the house, demand entrance into both her home as well as her body. Twenty-one days later, he still hadn’t arrived.
The waiting was destroying her nerves. She swore she had lost five of that extra ten pounds she carried pacing the darkened house each night.
She didn’t bother turning on lights. What was the use?
The waiting had so stretched her nerves that she found herself unable to stand one more night of it.
She wasn’t waiting another minute.
She was horny, she was pissed, she was bored, and she was ready to socialize. For at least a few hours.
Thankfully, the county’s only bar and local nightspot was only a few blocks from her home, on the north side of the city square.
Bartlette’s Bar and Grill also hosted the county’s meals and drinks for the weekend socials. Throughout the rest of the year, customers could count on a band every weekend and, weather permitting, the wide sidewalk to spill out to when the crush of the crowd became overpowering.
Dressed in jeans, a soft blue sweater, and low-heeled boots, Cami made the walk to the establishment as quickly as possible without running.
There hadn’t been phone calls in the past three weeks from her less-than-admiring “blocked” caller. Evidently he’d either considered her a lost cause, or he hadn’t realized Rafer had been at the house for that last one. Whichever it was, there had been relative silence where the calls were concerned.
That didn’t ease her nerves, if anything, it made them worse. It also made the walk to the bar one filled with trepidation and the knowledge that Jaymi hadn’t been taken from her home the night she had been killed. She had been caught on the street going after Cami’s medicine.
That fact was something her father reminded her of often. That if it hadn’t been for her, Jaymi would have never been killed.
Cami knew better. The killer had been focused on Jaymi, because she knew something about him. She had finally realized his identity.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t told anyone else her secret, neither had she written it in the journal she kept.
Turning the corner to the city square, it was to the sight of a larger than normal crowd.
Customers were definitely spilling out of the bar, sitting on the cement benches across the street in the well-lit square, or at the bistro tables that sat scattere
d around the wide sidewalk, and in the well-manicured area of the festively lit inner courtyard that sat inside the four sidewalks that comprised the city square.
“Cami!” Loud and boisterous, a feminine voice lifted amid the music and the chatter as a slender figure detached herself and all but skipped across the street to meet her. “It’s about time your fine ass showed up.”
Green eyes sparkling, her freckled face filled with laughter, the kindergarten teacher, Emma Walker, threw her arms around Cami’s shoulders for a boisterous hug.
“Geeze, Emma, you’d think it’s been years since you’ve seen me instead of days,” Cami laughed as she hugged the shorter girl back.
“It’s been forever since you’ve come out to play.” Emma stepped back, almost bouncing, laughter bubbling from her lips and gleaming in the gem-bright green of her eyes.
“Well, I’m definitely coming out to play tonight,” she informed the other girl.
“And just in time for some juicy, juicy gossip.” Emma rolled her eyes expressively as she linked her arm with Cami and began pulling her down the block. “Tell me you were not at the Ramsey Ranch just after the blizzard wrapped around Rafe Callahan like a vine?”
“Like a vine?” Her brows arched as she glanced over at her friend. “I don’t remember being wrapped at all. Locked against that wide manly chest, definitely.”
Regardless of what Rafer thought, there was no shame in what she had done, or in having others know she had done it. What terrified her was losing him.
Emma came to a hard stop, staring up at her in shock.