“That’s not surprising. After the stunt you pulled, I had no choice but to put on a wet suit that would withstand the freezing cold river, leap from that bridge, and fake my own death. With everyone I knew—not to mention the police—suspecting me of foul play in your demise—” Phillip shrugged his shoulders uncaringly even as his eyes narrowed and his lower lip curled resentfully. “You can imagine how tough it would’ve been for me to get a decent job with that suspicion haunting me. So I created a new identity, moved to Dallas where no one would recognize me, and took an investment banking job there.”
“Obviously, you’ve been successful,” Gillian noted. Just as she knew he always would be.
Phillip shrugged and kept his eyes on hers. “Professionally and financially, yes, I have been. Personally is another matter,” he admitted as his eyes burned with a strange, passionate light. “My darling Meg. I told you that no divorce would ever ruin what we have and I was right,” he finished with something akin to amazement. “To this day, no woman has ever been able to take your place. In fact,” he told her wistfully as his hands tightened into fists and he flashed her an odd, contented smile, “not a day went by that I didn’t dream about what I’d do if I ever found you again.”
Oh, God, Gillian thought as her legs began to shake. I was right. Even after all this time, nothing has changed. He’s still as nuts, and obsessed with me, as he ever was.
“So you can imagine my surprise Saturday evening—when I returned home from a date with yet another woman who could not begin to compare with you—’ Anger suddenly lit Phillip’s eyes. His lips tightened in a grim parody of a smile as he raked her with a hot glance and continued to reflect, “There I was, thumbing through the Internet edition of USA Daily, looking for the latest financial news, when what should I see but your picture.” He shook his head, clearly savoring that moment every bit as much as Gillian had always dreaded it. “I have to tell you, Meg,” he whispered seductively, as a muscle worked angrily in his jaw. “Finding you again after all these years was like a dream come true.”
A chill went down Gillian’s spine at the possessiveness in his low voice, and the twisted love in his eyes.
“So I hopped on the first flight out yesterday morning, rented a car at the airport in Helena, and drove out here to investigate the situation for myself.”
Gillian swallowed.
“And of course once I was here,” Phillip continued in a smug voice that literally made her skin crawl, “I wondered how long it would take you to figure out and find me, too.”
Too long, obviously, Gillian thought. She kept her eyes level on his, and her hand on the loaded gun hidden in the folds of her Western skirt. “I take it you’ve been hiding out here all morning?” she asked casually.
He gauged the odds and shrugged. “Longer than that. Ever since I left the dining hall last night.”
Gillian flushed as she realized her suspicions had been on target after all. “So you were there.”
“I had to make sure it was you. As soon as I saw those handwritten notes in the margin of those cookbooks, I knew. Just as you apparently knew, from the USA Daily article on the Net, that I only had two places to look for you and your beloved, if I didn’t want to ask a lot of questions and draw attention to myself—your workplace, and his.”
And since Max had placed a message on Cisco’s answering machine telling clients Cisco and his secretary were on vacation for the next two weeks, Phillip had known the building would be deserted, Gillian realized, feeling ill.
Phillip started for her, a malicious glint in his dark eyes. Gillian lifted the gun and pointed it at her crazed ex-husband. “Don’t come any closer.”
He sized her up unpleasantly. “Since when do you carry a firearm?”
“Since I learned how to defend myself,” Gillian told him flatly, letting her glance turn as menacing as his. She cocked the trigger. “Sit down, Phillip. Now.”
His eyes still on hers, he eased obediently back into the chair behind Cisco’s desk. “And keep your hands up where I can see them.” Gillian instructed.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” Phillip mocked, unimpressed.
Gillian set her chin determinedly. “If I have to, I will.”
“I don’t believe it.” He regarded her, hate in his eyes.
“Believe it,” Gillian repeated in a cold, hard tone. Keeping a close watch on him, she ordered, “Now pick up the phone and dial 911.”
“The police again, Meg? I thought we had made it clear that getting the police involved only means I’ll have to beat you all the harder when they leave.”
Her mouth going dry at the memory of him doing just that, Gillian ignored the icy shiver of fear moving across her skin and continued to regard him with deadly intent. “Just do it,” she ordered grimly. “And keep your other hand beside your head, where I can see it.”
“Fine.” Phillip reached for the phone, but at the last second picked up a heavy brass paperweight and hurled it at her instead. She deftly stepped aside as it smashed against the wall.
“You’ll have to kill me to get rid of me, Meg,” Phillip vowed as he lurched out of the chair and kept coming. “Because this time I am not letting you go, not ever again.”
Gillian knew it was him or her, and it was not going to be her—not this time. The bile rising in her throat, she took aim and fired. The months of target practice paid off because even with her hands shaking nearly uncontrollably, the bullet hit him squarely in the shoulder, several inches above his heart. Shock and disbelief spreading across his face, Phillip reeled backward and slumped against the bookcases as blood seeped through his shirt, and the acrid smell of gunpowder hung in the air.
Still keeping the gun trained on him, Gillian grabbed the phone with a shaking hand, dragged it across the desk toward her and punched in 911 herself. One way or another this was all going to end. “This is Gillian Taylor. Get Sheriff Anderson and an ambulance to Cisco Kidd’s law office. I’ve just shot my ex-husband.” She paused. “Yes, he’s still alive.” But the way he was bleeding, she did not know how long that would be the case. Damn it all, she thought, furious and distressed, she had never wanted to kill him, never wanted to kill anyone.
Hand pressed to his shoulder, disbelief etched on his face, Phillip staggered to his feet. “Got to…stop the bleeding…” he rasped in shock as her hands shook all the more. Heaven help her, she did not want to shoot Phillip again, but she would if it came down to it. She was not going to let him hurt her again. She was not going to let him hurt anyone.
“Whatever you do, don’t hang up the phone,” the 911 operator said.
“I won’t,” Gillian promised.
“Help’ll be there shortly.”
But what did she do until then? Gillian wondered.
Swaying, Phillip grabbed on to the edge of the desk. “Meg, help me—” he moaned and then slumped facedown on the Persian carpet.
Gillian waited and waited. Still, he didn’t move. Didn’t take in even one, shuddering pain-filled breath.
“Oh, God,” Gillian whispered hoarsely into the. phone, beginning to go into shock herself. “I think I killed him.”
“He may have just passed out,” the 911 operator said. “Check for a pulse. Stop the bleeding if you can.”
With effort, Gillian shook off the lethargy engulfing her and forced her legs to move. Still clutching the gun, she knelt beside Phillip and tried to turn him. But he was as still and heavy as a stone, and one hand wouldn’t do it.
Reluctantly she put the gun to the left of her, and reached both hands out again. Calling on all her strength, she turned her ex-husband so he was lying on his back, then pressed both hands, one on top of another, to the wound in his shoulder. It seemed an eternity before the bleeding slowed, then stopped.
Knowing he was still unconscious, knowing she needed some kind of bandage to keep the wound stable, Gillian pushed numbly to her feet and went into the coffee room between the reception area and Cisco’s office. She sna
tched a stack of soft cotton dish towels from the linen shelf. Returning, she folded one over Phillip’s wound, and knotted two others together to form a sling to hold it in place.
The next thing Gillian knew, Phillip’s eyes were open. The gun was in his right hand and jabbed against her throat “Good job,” Phillip rasped, as the breath left her body in one terrifying whoosh. “Now help me up.”
If I go with him, I’m dead
Gillian shook her head and, ignoring the gun pressed into her throat, pretended concern for his wound. “I think it’d be better not to move you,” she said, stunned she could sound so calm when her entire universe was falling apart. “We should wait for the ambulance.” And the sheriff.
Phillip grabbed her arm with his free hand. “Like hell we will,” he grunted. “We’re getting out of here, now.”
She knew that voice. There was no arguing with him. No reasoning. No pleasing.
Maybe standing will make him pass out, Gillian thought, as she called on all her strength to lift him to a sitting position as rapidly as possible.
His expression turned ugly, menacing. His grip on her arm tightened brutally as he rested for a moment before lumbering to his feet. With an anguished gasp, he held the gun to her neck and half dragged, half pushed her to walk backward to the door. “You never should have tried to fool me, Meg.”
“I wanted to end the violence.”
Sweat dripped off his chin and onto her forehead as he forced her to keep moving again. “Of course, what you never understood, Meg, was that our committment to each other was a lifelong affair,” he informed her coldly.
No, my love for Cisco is a lifelong affair, Gillian thought, realizing that because of her attempts to spare Cisco and his family any danger, by bringing it all on herself, that it might be too late for her and Cisco after all.
“Not that I didn’t try to teach you,” Phillip lamented in a sick, vicious voice that chilled her to her soul. Shaking his head, he pushed her through the library. “I tried everything I knew to show you how to be a good, obedient wife—”
“But I just couldn’t learn, could I?” Gillian countered sarcastically, her heartbeat picking up frantically as he shoved her out of the law office, toward Cisco’s car. “And now you’ve got an even bigger problem,” Gillian said, struggling and digging in her heels, despite the gun pointed at her throat. “Because Cisco and the whole McKendrick family are going to know that you’ve done this and they’re not going to rest until they see that you get what you have coming to you.”
“And what is that, Meg?” Phillip took hold of her hair and jerked her face up to his. “What do I have coming to me?” Phillip echoed with a violent sarcasm that made her shiver. “You?”
“No,” Cisco said, stepping from around the side of the office building. “This is what you have coming to you.” He cocked his rifle, an expression of lethal seriousness on his face. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would not hesitate to shoot. “Let her go, Phillip.”
“So you can have her?” Phillip jerked Gillian in front of him and gave her hair a vicious yank that made her cry out in pain. “I don’t think so.”
Trace, Max and Cody all stepped forward. All were armed. And so was Sheriff Anderson. “You’re surrounded, Wingate. You don’t have a chance. Drop your weapon and let the girl go—now,” Sheriff Anderson ordered.
Knowing if she miscalculated she’d likely end up dead, and if she did nothing to stop him now she’d also likely end up dead, Gillian put her foot back and hooked it behind one of his at the same time she gave him two hard elbows, one low to his ribs, the other high to his wound.
As she had hoped, Phillip winced in pain and lost his footing. His grip on her loosening, he stumbled backward, swearing.
Gasping in terror, Gillian pushed away from Phillip and the wildly waving gun with all her might. She dove headfirst for the ground, hitting it hard enough to knock the wind right out of her just as the gun in Phillip’s hand discharged.
The silence that followed was deafening. But no more shots followed. None were necessary. Phillip was utterly still, felled by the gun in his own hand. Sheriff Anderson sprang into action as the paramedics and other officers arrived, but in the end there was not much they could do.
Her knees shaking so badly, they felt as if they would no longer support her, Gillian turned to Cisco, wanting only him.
His eyes locked with hers emotionally. He crossed to her side, gathered her close and kissed her with a rough possessiveness that shook her to her very soul.
“I’m sorry,” she said when the stormy kiss had ended, able to see and feel how he had suffered, seeing her in such danger. “I should have told you, I should have let you come with me!”
“You ought to be sorry,” Cisco chastised hotly, scowling down at her as a muscle worked convulsively in his jaw. “Damn it all, Gillian. You could have been killed!”
Chapter Twelve
“Okay, just say it, and get it over with,” Gillian urged Cisco wearily the moment they walked in the door to the honeymoon cottage.
Cisco stiffened and cursed softly under his breath, aware she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t bear this tension between them much longer. “Say what?” he demanded gruffly.
Gillian sighed and continued trying to decipher the expression in his dark gray eyes. She couldn’t read it and she didn’t like this situation.
Was he through with her because of what she’d done? Still in it for the inheritance? Or planning to inherit and then ever so gently and gallantly cut her loose from this marriage they still found themselves in? She didn’t know the answer. She only knew that, deep down, he was hurting—and yes, probably as confused—as she.
“You’re still mad as heck with me for leaving and going off alone, aren’t you?” she guessed finally when the continuing silence between them nearly undid her.
Cisco shrugged impassively as he hung his cowboy hat on the hook by the back door and tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter.
“What, in all of Montana, would make you think that?” he countered emotionlessly, looping his thumbs through his belt and adapting a censuring, spread-legged stance.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Gillian replied, aware his anger and disappointment had kindled her own. “Maybe the fact that although you stood stoically by me during the entire police investigation into Phillip’s death as any good husband or attorney would, and Max and the McKendricks obviously wanted you to, you haven’t said much of anything to me personally, not then, and not on the ride back to the cottage.”
“What’s there to say?” Cisco asked with as much indifference as he could muster as he kept his eyes on hers. He hated the self-doubt her actions had engendered in him. “You didn’t trust me to be able to protect you, so instead of confiding in me and letting me know straight out that you thought Phillip was in town, instead of giving me a chance to be the kind of husband you needed and wanted, you staged that whole elaborate kiss-off. Then you ditched me the first chance you got and put your own life in danger, without any thought to yourself or me or the rest of the McKendricks or how we’d feel if anything happened to you.” In his view, those actions pretty much spoke for themselves.
Gillian’s green eyes gleamed with moisture. She walked toward him, hands outstretched. “I was trying to spare you any further hurt,” she explained.
Cisco scowled and shook his head. He couldn’t believe he had let himself be this vulnerable to a woman, never mind one as distrusting of him as Gillian Taylor.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” he shot back roughly, shoving a hand through his hair. “Although I have to admit that knowing your past, and knowing what you’d said earlier, I had half expected you to run out on me and our marriage the first chance you got, on whatever flimsy excuse presented itself to you. But like a fool I hoped the intimacy we had shared the past two days would have bound you to me, and made you have second thoughts.” He had hoped, in short, for a miracle that was never going to happen.
“Such as—?”
“I wanted Max and you and the rest of the family to be able to go ahead with the profile in Personalities! magazine. That wasn’t going to be possible if I stayed here.”
Cisco regarded her incredulously.
Gillian glared right back at him. “You’re determined to stay angry with me, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to feel this way,” Cisco retorted, able to feel the tension coming off her in waves. “The fact is, Phillip’s threat to you was something we should have handled together, Gillian. Not just in the beginning, when you finally confided in me and we brought Sheriff Anderson and the rest of the family in to help us deal with the situation, but the entire time. The fact that you instead chose to go it alone once again as soon as the going got really rough, says a lot about your lack of faith and trust in me, doesn’t it?”
And damn it all to hell, he hated this feeling that he had failed to be what she wanted and needed…in the same way he had failed to be the child the foster parents had wanted and needed. Cisco turned away, aware his heart and soul had never felt heavier.
“I want a woman I can trust, and a marriage I can rely on.” At the moment, he didn’t feel he had either in Gillian.
The tears that had been gathering in her eyes rolled down her cheeks. Stubbornly she rubbed them away and moved closer, in a drift of hyacinth perfume. “I thought you’d understand I was just doing what was best, in doing what I had to do alone.”
Cisco knew she’d never consciously set out to hurt him, but that knowledge only made things worse. “That’s the problem, Gillian. I do understand,” Cisco said sadly. “When you acted the way you did, you were just following your heart, just as Max advised.” He shook his head in exasperation, aware he had never been more involved with a woman or given more of himself. And yet it had all turned out wrong anyway. He sighed. “I love Max, and God knows you’re right,” Cisco continued, his lips set grimly. “I’d do just about anything for him. But it was a stupid idea to try and tie two complete strangers together in forty-eight hours or less.” Worse, Cisco felt like an utter fool for buying into it. For allowing himself to think that two days and nights of passion could lead to an entire lifetime of the same.
Spur-Of-The-Moment Marriage Page 17