by Fiona Brand
By ten o'clock the next morning the skies were clear and he was blasting into town to fill up on gas, the rumbling throb of the bike stirring the locals into more life than they usually showed. He gassed up, ignoring old Sal Tremaine, who always treated him as if he were going to pull a gun and rob his store. The clamp of emotion still pressing tightly around his chest finally began to ease as he left town in a shimmering heat wave. The euphoria of leaving, of the bright summer day, had lasted all the way to Fairley. Right up until he'd been stopped on the side of the road, read his rights and then herded into the back of a police car.
For the murder of his father.
Cullen eased the truck over his cattle stop and pulled up beside the barn. Fifteen years ago, he hadn't stood a chance. With his beat-up face and the abrasions on his knuckles—and the fact that he'd been leaving Riverbend at speed—he'd been the prime suspect. If it hadn't been for the coroner finding that Ian Logan had died by accidental drowning, Cullen would probably still be serving time.
So what exactly had Trask been boasting about? Had he been the one to beat his father up that night? How else would he know what injuries Ian Logan had had? Cullen was still as confused about his father's death as the police had been at the time. While Cullen had been dead asleep in the barn, Ian Logan had driven his battered truck into town. Someone had given him an expensive brand of whiskey he couldn't afford, then, when he was too drunk to retaliate, had hit him twice—hard enough to knock him out—then left him and the empty whiskey bottle by the side of the road just outside town. Evidently Ian Logan had roused himself enough to stumble into a ditch, then passed out again. The heavy rain had done the rest, rapidly filling, then overflowing the ditches for a short period of time. Long enough to drown him.
Any number of angry husbands would have had reason to want revenge—Caroline's husband, Richard Hayward, for one. But Hayward had offered to represent Cullen the next day, waiving his fee. His hands had been elegantly unswollen, with no telltale marks on his knuckles. And Trask had been new in town, moving in with a number of other construction workers who were involved in the shopping mall developments at Fairley and had been attracted by Riverbend's low real estate prices.
Maybe Trask had beaten Ian Logan up that night. He was a violent enough man not to need much of an excuse.
Cullen swung out of the truck into the crisp freshness of dawn. He had a natural resistance to seeking any kind of help from the law for himself, but he was going to have to set that aversion aside for Rachel's sake. He would talk to Dan Holt about Trask's threatening behaviour and the possibility that Trask had been involved in Ian Logan's death.
He knew nothing would come of it. Dan was conscientious; he would question Trask, but there was no evidence, only hearsay. Trask might be stupid, but he wasn't that stupid. He would clam up or, worse, try to make it sound like Cullen was still trying to cover his own ass for what had happened all those years ago.
Cullen's mouth twisted cynically. And if he hadn't been believed fifteen years ago, why should anyone believe him now?
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
Rachel was pregnant.
"Are you sure?" she asked the doctor. It was a silly question to ask when she knew very well that she was pregnant—that six weeks after spending that one night with Cullen, she was most emphatically pregnant.
But then, the intervening weeks had been confusing. She'd had a skimpy period, and when Cullen had rung to check on her, she'd told him curtly that he was in the clear and hung up before she could betray the devastation she felt—and before he could express relief. But for the past few days her body had felt … different, and her next period had failed to appear.
Dr. Dalziel, who had delivered her over twenty-seven years ago, didn't seem to mind her question in the least. "The test is positive, Rachel. Can you give me a possible date for conception, or, failing that, the date of your last period?"
Rachel dug into her bag, pulled out the piece of paper on which she'd noted the date she'd made love with Cullen and handed it to the doctor. "The conception date is … accurate."
As Dr. Dalziel made notes in a file, Rachel sat numbly trying to reach into the future and grasp what was going to happen. How radically her life was going to change.
It wasn't as if she hadn't gone over the possibilities already, but nothing had been real then. This baby hadn't been real. Now she had to face the ramifications of being a single parent, because Cullen didn't want any kind of relationship with her. She hadn't seen him since the morning after they'd made love.
And she wouldn't not have her child.
A fierce protectiveness welled up inside her, and she touched her flat stomach with gentle, wondering fingers, barely hearing Dr. Dalziel's advice on diet and rest. She was going to have to tell Cullen—but not yet. Not until she'd had time to come to terms with this herself.
She left the surgery in a daze, stepping off the kerb without looking. Brakes squealed. An angry driver honked his horn. "You got a death wish, lady?" he yelled before driving off, leaving the acrid scent of smoking rubber and exhaust fumes behind.
Rachel stumbled back, legs shaking, hand automatically clutching at her stomach. A wave of nausea swept over her, and she groaned out loud, clapping one hand over her mouth and reaching out to a nearby telephone pole for support.
The nausea receded, leaving her feeling weak and sticky with perspiration. "Oh, great," she muttered out loud, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed her hanging on to the pole for dear life. She straightened, then walked slowly and carefully back to the salon.
Now, not only was she pregnant, but she felt like it, too.
* * *
Rachel almost didn't hear the sound of the knocking above her aerobics music. She hit the switch on the stereo and frowned at her watch before pulling an old, soft grey sweatshirt on over her leotard. The knocking came again, and she started down the stairs. It was way too early for Cole to be here. Maybe if she'd been a great cook he would have shown up early to prowl the kitchen, lifting pot lids and generally making a nuisance of himself. But they were having vegetarian. Her mouth lifted wryly. Of course Cole didn't know what she was going to feed him, although he probably guessed it would be something exotic and spicy—not the plain meat and vegetables that he deemed "proper" food.
She unlocked, leaving the chain on. When she pulled the door open and peered through the gap, she had an absurd impulse to slam the door closed again.
It was Cullen.
Time slowed to a trickle, then seemed to halt altogether. It passed through her mind that she was hallucinating, that lack of sleep and the aching need to see Cullen had finally tipped her over the edge. Then reality kicked in. After seven, almost eight, weeks, he'd finally decided to show. He was checking on her as she should have guessed he would. And now that he was physically here, she found she still wasn't ready to face his final rejection of both her and their baby. "Go away," she muttered, and shoved at the door.
It wouldn't budge. She looked down and saw his leather-booted foot wedged in the gap.
"Let me in, Rachel," he said in a low rumble that made her even more determined to get rid of him, because the impact he was having on her was near lethal. Just one glance at his cool grey eyes and the fragile defences she'd worked so hard at shoring up crumbled.
"I'm glad to see you're using the chain," he murmured.
Rachel stopped pushing; there was no point. She couldn't keep Cullen out if he wanted to come in. "I told you before, I only make a mistake once. Then I learn from it."
She only wished that statement were true, because right at this very moment she was staring into the narrowed, glittering eyes of her second mistake.
"Are you going to let me in?"
Rachel was tempted to say no. Unbearably tempted to say yes, then, when he removed his foot from the door, to slam it and lock it tight. But simple honesty compelled her to nod. Five minutes and he would be gone again. Gone for good.
And as much as she wanted to avoid his final rejection, she couldn't not tell Cullen that he was going to be a father. He had a right to know. And, more importantly, her child had a right to know who his or her father was.
When he removed his foot, she unlatched the chain, then left him to follow her up the stairs. The hallway was too narrow to linger in, and she didn't want to get that close to Cullen again. At least in her lounge she could put the width of the room between them and, with any luck, a sofa or two.
His tread as he came up the stairs was unnervingly silent, and when he entered the small, civilised domain of her sitting room, a shiver that was purely primal in source rippled down her spine. Any progress she'd made in trying to neutralise what she felt for Cullen was abruptly ripped aside by the sheer, untamed force of his masculinity. Rachel was absurdly glad for the oversize sweatshirt she was wearing, because she suddenly felt exposed and uneasy.
She knew too well how much he could hurt her, and there was more at stake now than just her emotions.
Cullen prowled around her furniture, circumnavigated a coffee table and stopped only feet from her. She saw that he'd showered and changed before coming to see her. His hair was still damp and caught back in a ponytail; his jaw was freshly shaven. He smelled faintly of an expensive, subtle cologne and was dressed for the cooler weather in black close-fitting pants and a black crew neck sweater that clung to his shoulders and chest.
"How have you been?" he asked with a gentleness that at first startled her, then made her want to hit him.
Rachel drew a deep breath. "Do you really care?"
He didn't answer, just kept watching her, cool and wary and distant, and Rachel finally gave in to the urge to hurt him, to make him feel some of her shattered devastation. "As a matter of fact, I'm pregnant. Two months pregnant. I guess that means a December baby. It'll be hot then, but apparently summer is a great time for giving birth."
Cullen's heart stopped. Then it thudded to life again, hammering savagely as adrenaline seared his veins and corded muscles that were already locked tight. He felt as if he'd just been kicked in the solar plexus; he was having the same difficulty in getting his breath.
Pregnant. Two months pregnant.
He finally dragged air into his lungs, and with it came a flood of sharp-edged images: a lamplit room and Rachel clinging to him; the shattering moment of penetration; the consuming, rending beat of release. And now a baby, his baby. Growing inside Rachel.
A strident screech cut through the early evening quiet as someone hauled down a garage door, and, more distantly, Cullen registered the plaintive lowing of a cow. The faint scent of wood smoke drifted through one of Rachel's partially open windows, mixing with the flowery scent of the bowl of potpourri on her coffee table. "You said you got your period," he said in a voice so low it scraped gravel.
"I did. But apparently that can happen."
There were dark hollows beneath Rachel's eyes, and, stubborn defiance apart, with her hair tumbled around her pale face she looked haunted and tired and fragile. He watched her reach for a handbag that was nestled on one of the couches. She passed him a slip of paper. It was tattered, as if she'd had it awhile, as if she'd handled it repeatedly. The lab report was brief and to the point. And it changed everything.
He noticed it was dated a couple of weeks ago. His chest tightened. "You weren't going to tell me."
"I would have. Eventually."
Cullen held her gaze, absorbing her condemnation, knowing that he deserved everything she wanted to throw at him. He hadn't trusted himself to see her until he was packed and ready to leave town. There were no words he could dredge up that could atone for the hurt he'd caused her, because even while the primitive, possessively male part of him gloried in her pregnancy and the claim on her it gave him, the logical part of his brain knew that now there wasn't just one reason to let her go. There were two.
"I'm going to have the baby."
Cullen's fingers tightened around the lab-report, tightened against the need to reach out and claim her, to demand to see some evidence of the child in the delicate curve of her stomach, her breasts. And suddenly he needed to hold her with a force that shook him. Not in a sexual way—although that desire was even stronger, more overwhelming, than it had ever been—but just to have her close.
But there was a new strength in her tawny eyes, a distance that filled him with an inexplicable fury. A fury he had no right to. Under the circumstances, he should be glad she was so strong, so independent. The complications of their situation shuddered through him, escalating his frustrated anger, his need to take charge, to sweep away all the barriers that made Cullen Logan and Rachel Sinclair so impossible. Damn it, she was his.
A knock interrupted the tense silence. And it wasn't just a knock. It was a heavy pounding that demanded entrance.
The sound jolted Rachel out of the immobility that had taken hold of her while she'd waited for Cullen to respond to her news. To ultimately reject her and their baby. She was so certain of his rejection that she could already feel the pain of that final separation seeping through her limbs, tying her stomach in knots.
Cullen's gaze was damnably cool and controlled as her door shuddered under another assault, his voice a low, even growl. "Do you want me to answer that?"
Rachel almost laughed out loud but managed to halt the incipient hysteria before it carried her away completely. And let the whole town know you're sleeping with me? she thought. Let you know that I don't mind that the whole town knows I'm your— She shook her head, grimacing, because the hell of it was she knew that for Cullen their situation wasn't that simple. She'd already managed to hurt him, to shake him, even though he wasn't showing it. She would only hate herself more if she gave in to the temptation to become a complete shrew. "It's my door," she said, moving toward the stairs. "I'll get it."
Cullen padded to Rachel's bedroom window and stared out at the uncharming view of the back alley. Cole's truck was parked across the road, right behind his own.
When he heard the hard male voice demanding to be let in, heard Rachel fumbling with the locks, Cullen's hands knotted into fists. Frustration rose in him again, starting a snarl deep in his throat. He wasn't used to being helpless, and he didn't like it one little bit. He should have been the one to answer the door. He should have been the one to deflect Cole's aggression. Rachel was too damned fragile to take anything else on right now. And although Cole loved his sister, he couldn't see beyond his own protective role. He would cut her down in his quest to save her.
Unless Cullen staked his claim the only way Cole would understand.
The concept of caring for Rachel and the baby speared through him, sinking in bone deep until he couldn't think of anything else. Common sense told him to leave despite her fragility. But even as he listed all the reasons why his departure would make her life—and the baby's—better, he knew he wasn't going to go.
The raw, possessive hunger to have her with him took his breath away. He just wasn't capable of abandoning Rachel, just as he hadn't been capable of staying away from her in the first place. And he sure as hell couldn't walk out on a child—his child—the way his mother had walked out on him. Not until he knew they were both safe and provided for.
Cullen prowled back into the lounge, coming to a halt very near the place where they'd made love. The wild sweetness of the memory made his throat constrict with a longing he still hadn't been able to grind out of his system with hard work and cold plans for the future.
Cole's boots sounded like gunfire on the hardwood stairs. So be it, Cullen thought as he braced himself for the confrontation. Not exactly high noon on Riverbend's main street, but close enough.
"You bastard," Cole said with quiet menace. "You just couldn't leave her alone."
Rachel stepped around her brother, placing herself between Cole and him. "This is none of your business, Cole."
Cullen put his hands on Rachel's shoulders, his stomach lurching at the automatic way she protected him even
now, and suddenly the words weren't so very difficult to say. "We're getting married."
Rachel stiffened beneath his touch.
Cole's expression went blank. "Run that by me again?"
Cullen increased the pressure on Rachel's shoulders, urging her back against him. She was still stiff and resisting, but she didn't pull away. Her hair drifted like cool silk against the backs of his hands, and he gave in to the temptation to brush his mouth across the top of her head. "She's mine," he declared in a hard, cool voice. "We're getting married next week."
Rachel still hadn't moved; he felt as if he were holding a store mannequin, and he cursed the inevitable arousal that just being near her caused. With every breath the evidence of his weakness was more glaringly evident, and he fully expected her to spin around and crack him across the jaw with her fist. Right before she told him to go to hell.
"Rachel?" Cole demanded, ignoring Cullen.
She didn't answer for long seconds; then a faint tremor went through her. "I didn't require your … sanction when I married Adam," she said huskily. "I don't intend to ask for it now."
Relief relaxed some of the ferocious tension cording Cullen's muscles. She hadn't exactly said that she was marrying him. But she hadn't turned him down, either.
Cole swore and ran his fingers through his light hair. "Does Dad know?" he asked in a strained voice.
She lifted her chin. "I was planning on ringing him … when I—we set a date."
Rachel's capitulation had Cullen's fingers tightening in reflex, drawing her back until she was firmly lodged against his chest. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, hold her close, drown in the scent and feel of her. He was shaking, dizzy with mingled delight and despair. In a life spent dodging shadows, wading hip-deep in a darkness that sucked and pulled and somehow managed to coat everything, the gift of her trust blazed. He had no right to Rachel or the baby, but she, they, were his.