It took a moment for the words to sink in, for their meaning to become clear to her. “Joseph…had cancer? He was dying? But Adam, how could I not know something like that?”
Adam sighed, flipped a page, read on. “Doc made some notes here. It doesn’t sound as if the end was going to be pretty. Says he was concerned the patient might resort to suicide.”
“It looks like it was a fast-moving disease,” Elliot said. “And with the Percodan, the symptoms might have been tough to spot. Especially if…well, I take it you two didn’t spend a whole lot of quality time together. I can’t believe Doc thought that old goat was capable of suicide, though. He was too mean….” Elliot looked up fast. “I mean…sorry, Kirsten, I didn’t mean….”
“He was mean, all right,” she said. Closing her eyes, lowering her head, Kirsten whispered, “But that’s just what he did. He killed himself, but he hated me so much, he set me up to take the blame. He’s framing me for murder, even though he’s already dead by his own damn hand. I knew it. I knew it.”
Adam met Elliot’s eyes, and Elliot shook his head. “That can’t be right,” he said. “I’ve read the police files on this—”
“And just how the hell did you manage that?” Adam asked.
Elliot dismissed the question with a scowl and a shake of his head. “The point is, I did. And this can’t have been a suicide. Kirsten, they checked Joseph’s hands for powder traces. There was no sign. And there would have been—make no mistake, there would have been—if he’d fired that gun. Besides, his prints weren’t on the weapon.”
“Then he wore gloves.” She spoke levelly, firmly, not an ounce of doubt in her mind.
‘‘And took them off and got rid of them…after putting a bullet into his own head?” Elliot shook his head. “Don’t you see how impossible that is?”
“Then he had help.” She lifted her head, looked Elliot squarely in the eye. “And that help wasn’t me. Do you believe me, Elliot?”
Elliot swallowed hard, looked at his brother, then back at Kirsten again. “Yes. I do. But I wouldn’t count on that for much, Kirsten. I always was a sucker for a pair of pretty brown eyes.”
He was trying to lift her spirits with his charm and his infectious smile. Elliot the lighthearted, practical joker. Always kidding. Always upbeat.
She was grateful for the effort, but it was falling on sterile ground this time. She turned her question on Adam now. “And what about you? Do you believe me now, Adam? Do you believe that Joseph is the one who set this up to make me look guilty?”
He nodded without hesitation. “You know I believe you. But it brings up another question, doesn’t it, Kirsty?” She just watched him, waiting. “Why did he hate you that much? What the hell reason would Joseph have to hate you so very much that his dying wish was to see you convicted of his murder? And why is someone—his accomplice, maybe—trying to kill you now?”
“Ease up on her, Adam.” Elliot’s voice was anything but jovial.
“Why, Kirsten? Think. There has to be something, some motive—”
“I don’t know. Dammit, Adam, I don’t know.” Turning away, she moved back to the chair, her knees so watery she wasn’t certain she would be able to stand much longer. “Unless….”
“Unless what?” Adam carried the files to the copy machine, flicked a button, lifted the lid, all the while keeping one eye on Kirsten.
“Unless he found out…about the birth control pills. The one thing he wanted was an heir. A child. And…now that I know about his illness, I guess I can understand why he was so desperate about it. But I couldn’t let him win that round. I wouldn’t.”
“I know,” Adam said slowly.
She blinked, thought back. When had she told him any of this? “Another thing I talk about too much when I drink?” she asked.
Grim faced, he nodded.
“I went out of town for the pills, kept them hidden in the house. He…he was so determined. Especially in the last few weeks…” She stopped speaking when she saw the way Adam stilled, the way he clenched his hands into fists at his sides, so tightly his knuckles went white.
“I should have killed him myself,” he whispered.
“I’d gladly have helped,” Elliot said, his voice deep and quaking.
Kirsten shook her head. “I got myself into this situation. There was nothing either of you could have done. But if Joseph finally realized I’d been taking the pills all along…it would have infuriated him.”
“Enough to do this?” Adam asked.
She looked up, ashamed. “He was a monster, Adam. No one crossed Joseph Cowan without paying dearly. No one. He told me that again and again. And as many times as he proved it to me, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I still thought I could best him.”
Adam nodded. “Then we’ve found his motive.”
“And eliminated mine. If he was dying anyway, then I wouldn’t have needed to kill him in order to claim the inheritance, would I?”
“I wish it was that simple,” Adam said. “But if you didn’t know about the illness, it’s moot. And besides, we both know you had another reason to want him dead. The thing he held over you, the thing he used to blackmail you into that sham of a marriage in the first place.”
She looked away quickly. “The police don’t know about that. And…and if we put things back the way they were, if we’re careful, they won’t know we were ever here, either. I can say I knew about the illness all along.”
“More lies, Kirsten? You really think you can fix all of this with even more lies?”
She lowered her head, drew a shaky breath.
“Dammit, Adam, let up on her,” Elliot said, raising his voice. “I’d lie like a rug if it was me!”
“They’d only ask why she didn’t tell them about Cowan’s illness in the first place. Why she ran. And last I knew, assisted suicides were still illegal. And that’s what they’d say this was. They’d still charge her with murder, even if she could convince them it was all Cowan’s idea. Because she’s still the one whose prints are on the weapon.”
Her body slumped. Every word Adam spoke robbed her of more strength, until she didn’t feel she could even get out of the chair.
“He’s right, Elliot,” she said at last. “Your brother is right.”
“My brother is brutal.” Elliot came to the chair and knelt in front of her. “We’re gonna get you out of this mess, Kirsten. You hang tough, okay? Don’t give up yet. I’ll take you to Mexico myself if it comes to that, you hear me?”
She smiled at Elliot. So strong. So much a Brand man, through and through. “Thanks for that.” Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek. “It means a lot, Elliot. If I’d had a brother like you, I….” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head slowly.
“You do have,” he said, and he squeezed her hand.
Adam finished with the copies, returned the file to the drawer. “If you’re finished making kissy faces with Kirsten, Elliot, you can take these copies. Show ‘em to Garrett and then stash them someplace safe.”
Straightening, a little red in the face, Elliot nodded and took the sheaf of papers Adam held out. “All right. You two gonna be okay?” He was talking to Adam, but his eyes were on Kirsten.
She nodded. “Thanks for the help, Elliot. You’re a real knight in shining armor.”
“Yeah,” Adam said. “A real prince. Get your backside home, now, Galahad, before Sir Garrett catches you out here and tosses us both in the dungeon.”
Elliot faced his brother. Adam held out a hand. Elliot took it. “Thanks, little brother,” Adam said. And his eyes said he meant it.
“Holler if you need me.” Elliot let go, tipped his hat to Kirsten and left Doc’s office.
Adam sighed, slid the file cabinet drawer closed and faced Kirsten again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Seems like I’m forever saying and doing the wrong thing with you. I just want this to be over. I want this garbage and all the lies out of the way.”
“I know.”
&nb
sp; “I’m just trying to be realistic. Kirsten, it’s time for you to realize that the only way out of this is for you to tell the truth. All of it. And you can start by telling it to me.”
His face swam because of the tears in her eyes. “I know that, too.”
“I’ll understand. I promise, whatever you might have done, it isn’t going to make a difference in the way I feel about you.”
Her smile was bitter. She closed her eyes, unable to look at the pain and the love in his any longer. “It will,” she said. “But maybe there’s just no way around that. I have to face it. And when I do, I’m going to lose you all over again, Adam.”
“You won’t. God, I hate to see you hurting like this. It’s killing me not to be able to take away that pain in your eyes.”
“Do you really want to take this pain away for me, Adam?”
He stared at her, a puzzled frown bending his brows. “You know I do. I’d take it on myself if I could.” He knelt in front of her and gathered her close in his arms. Dropping soft kisses in her hair, he kneaded her shoulders and spoke softly. “I’d take away every bad thing that’s ever happened to you, sweetheart. If you’d just tell me how.”
A shuddering sob worked its way out of her, and she nodded against his chest. “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you how.”
Adam went still, not moving, waiting for her to go on, she knew.
“Take me away from here, Adam. Take me someplace…soft…and dark…and make love to me, one last time. You were the first, and I want you to be the last. Maybe all that happened in between will stop haunting me then. And in the morning I’ll tell you what you want to know. And you’ll hate me, and it will be over…for you. But I’ll have one sweet memory to hold on to. And I’ll cherish it, no matter what else happens. I’ll be able to face the rest, the truth, all of it, if I can just have this one night to be with you.”
He leaned away slightly, searching her face. “You can have as many nights with me as you want, lady. But it won’t be like you think it’s going to be. Have a little faith in me, Kirsty.”
“I have all the faith in the world in you, Adam. But that’s the way it will be.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “No. Don’t talk about the secrets I have to tell you. Not now. Not again, not until morning. Promise me.”
He probed her eyes for a long time. And finally he nodded. “Okay. Okay, Kirsty. I won’t talk. I’ll show you instead.” And then he kissed her. Long, and slow, and deep. When he stood, he took her with him, scooping her up into his arms. And then he carried her out of Doc’s tiny office and into the night.
Adam carried her into the hay-scented barn at the west side of town and up the ladder into the loft. It was dark in there, dusty and warm. It smelled good. Fresh and clean. He lowered her into the hay. It scratched the denim she wore and pillowed her aching head. She could hear the horses in the barn below them, where Adam had put them for the night. He came down beside her, ran a hand through her hair. “Kirsty, do you know where we are?”
Her throat tightened just a little. She nodded, but she doubted he could see her in the darkness. All she could see of him was the tiny gleam of light shining in his eyes. The rest of him was just a darker shadow among shadows. “It’s the Recknor place, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Do you remember the first time I brought you here?”
Tears tried to choke her. She’d been seventeen. He’d been eighteen. And they’d both been holding themselves in check for way longer than any of their friends. Until one day after school, when they’d sneaked into old man Recknor’s hayloft. It was too private, too intimate, too safe, to keep them from exploring further.
“I couldn’t see you,” Adam whispered. “Just like now. It was so dark, I had to look at you with my hands. I had to feel how perfect you were. How right.”
“I remember,” she whispered.
Adam pushed the denim shirt down her arms, and his palms, hot and callused, skimmed her flesh. He ran his hands over her T-shirt, cupping her breasts, squeezing her and releasing his breath in a shaky sigh. “I’ve made love to you a thousand times in the past two years,” he told her. “In my mind. In my sleep. My pillow becomes your face.” He pushed the T-shirt up, baring her breasts to the cool night air. Then he touched them again, rough palms on tender crests. Shrill sensation clawed through her. “I’d bring the sheets to my lips and imagine these breasts. I’d touch myself and imagine your body.”
“Adam,” she whispered. “I swear I never wanted anyone but you. Never….”
“There hasn’t been anyone but me,” he told her. “Not in any way that matters.” He kissed and suckled her breasts, then her throat, then her jaw and cheek. “Let the time melt away, Kirsty. It’s been you and me all along. I think we both know that.” He moved his hand to the zipper of her jeans and slid it slowly down. When he slipped his hand inside, she arched against his touch.
“I haven’t been alive without you,” he told her, kissing her, speaking brokenly, passionately, against her lips, against her skin. “And you haven’t, either. Neither of us has existed without the other. So nothing that happened was real. None of it matters. None of it exists. Just this. Just us, Kirsty. Just this life that only lives when we’re together.”
He shoved her jeans down and moved to cover her body with his own. She felt him there, hard and real, and she believed everything he was saying to her. That this was all that mattered, all that was real. That nothing in between had ever really happened. That right now was their forever.
Adam slid inside her, and she closed her eyes, twisted her arms tight around him and held on. She loved this man. She could never love any other. It was him; it was only him.
He completed her.
“I love you, Kirsty,” he whispered. “I never stopped. I never will.”
He pushed her to the edge, then over, and when she spiraled downward, he caught her and began carrying her up again. He made love to her over and over again that night. And she didn’t want it to end. She didn’t ever want it to end. Because when it did…it would end forever.
Chapter 10
Dread. The feeling hit him along about the time he stirred awake and noticed the soft dawn sun beams that poked their way through the cracks in the barn walls and painted pale amber stripes on Kirsten’s face, in her hair and across the fragrant hay around her. It was morning. The morning when she had promised she would tell him her deepest secrets…and he had promised that those secrets would make no earthly difference to him.
A cold fist closed around his belly and squeezed. A deep burn traced the path of his sternum and spread its wings into his chest. As he sat up, staring down at Kirsten and wondering what the hell was happening to his logical, strategy-prone mind, she moved closer. A soft moan in protest of his absence, before she snuggled against him, nestled her head into his chest. And the sensations raging through him intensified. His heart went into meltdown, and his pulse seemed erratic and electrified. His scalp tingled. His spine shivered. He was alternately hot as hell and cold all over.
He’d done it, then, hadn’t he? He’d conjured up the kind of love he hadn’t been able to feel for Kirsten before. The kind he had always secretly known she deserved. An all-consuming, sickening, bigger-than-life kind of love. The kind Garrett and Chelsea had found with each other. The kind Ben and Penny had cherished and nurtured from the time they were school kids. The kind that had turned his hot-tempered brother Wes into a pussycat and had turned peace-loving Lash Monroe into a tiger, ready to take on all his lady’s big brothers, if that was what it took to win her heart.
Adam loved Kirsten in a way he had never realized he could love anyone. And it brought a huge shadow of ice-cold fear over his soul. And an old pain came creeping with it. A surge of the feelings he’d kept locked away for a long, long time. Darkness. Heartbreak. Loss. Betrayal. Abandonment. The fear of it happening all over again. The grim certainty that it would. That it would always happen to him.
If he lost her, he r
ealized slowly, it was going to destroy him. And he couldn’t shake that ingrained belief that he was about to do just that—lose her. He knew where the feeling came from. You take a kid who believes with everything in him that his parents will always be there, and you rob him of that faith…and there is no doubt that kid will lose his faith in everything. In everyone. In any kind of permanence. It ceases to exist for him from that moment on. He becomes convinced that there is no such thing as forever. That, for him, nothing good will ever last more than a few brief moments.
Adam didn’t want to believe those things, but he couldn’t help it any more than he could change the genetic structure of his own DNA. It was too ingrained, too deep. Too well learned.
He was scared, plain and simply scared.
He reached down, his hand trembling, and stroked Kirsten’s hair away from her face. She opened her eyes. Met his. Frowned slightly. “Adam?”
“I changed my mind,” he said, very softly, barely above a whisper, as he studied her dark lashes and the way they brushed her cheeks when she blinked up at him.
“What?” She blinked the sleep haze from her eyes and sat up, leaning on her elbow. “Changed your mind about what, Adam?”
He tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I don’t want to know this secret you’ve been keeping. Don’t tell me, Kirsty,” he whispered, voice choked, throat tight. “I just don’t think I want to know anymore. Maybe I don’t need to know.”
She closed her eyes very slowly, left them closed for a long moment, and drew a deep breath. “You need to know,” she said slowly. “It’s taken me a while to figure it out, but you do. And I need to tell you. I owe you the truth, Adam. You were right last night when you said it was…the only way out for me.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”
“It might just be the only way out for you, too,” she said, looking into his eyes again. “The only way you can let go of whatever it is you think you feel for me and move on with your life.”
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