Her Forgotten Betrayal

by Anna DeStefano

  She didn’t realize she was crying until he wiped at her face.

  She’d been able to fight back the crazy, sick feeling she always got in the pit of her stomach each time she visited her father’s cold, sterile office. Until Cole’s touch had been there, and his warm voice, and his fiery determination to stand by her side no matter how badly her only remaining family treated her. She snuggled closer. Her arms wrapped around his neck. Her lips brushed against his in shameless need.

  “Stay with me,” she pleaded, a second before his kiss healed every broken part of her.

  His hands roamed down her back, tracing her rib cage. They cupped her breasts through her dress and cardigan. His groan told her he’d realized she hadn’t worn a bra. He loved the secret ways she found to rebel against her father.

  “Shaw…” He said her name as if she were all there was, all there would ever be for him, as if this moment, every moment they could touch and feel and believe they would be together forever, was his whole world.

  His hands dropped to her skirt, inching it upward. She gasped, then wiggled closer on her tiptoes, giving herself over to him and the moment, never mind where they were. He lifted her, held her suspended, and cradled as he turned, then sat on the couch with her in his lap, still kissing her.

  “Cole,” she begged.

  “Don’t cry,” he growled, cupping her face between his work-calloused hands. “It’s going to be okay, Shaw. I won’t let him hurt you anymore. Shaw?”

  “Shaw? Are you okay?”

  She started, whisked back to the present. She found herself at the desk instead of the couch, but with Cole’s hands still holding her. They were on her shoulders instead of her cheeks. But his face was as close as in her memory.

  Her memory…

  “Where did you go, darlin’?” he asked, his voice sounding just as it had all those years ago.

  She gasped. Shock slammed into her, electrifying nerve endings from her toes up, ringing in her ears, propelling her out of his arms, his lap, the chair they were sitting in.

  She was remembering. Not her shooting, but her life long before she’d been hurt. She was wide awake this time. And the past, at least one confusing moment of it, was staying with her.

  She was coming back to herself—who she’d once been and whomever, whatever, Cole Marinos had once been to her.

  She stared at him.

  “You said that once before.” She couldn’t stop staring at his mouth, feeling the sensation of his teenage lips on hers. She could still taste him. “Here, in this room.”

  “What?” he asked softly. “What did I say?”

  “Darlin’. You called me darlin’, like you did when we were teenagers, waiting in this room together.”

  She pressed her hand to her temple, letting herself hope. It was starting. Her memory was finally coming back.

  “What else did you see?” He stood, too, watching her with an intensity that demanded she answer him.

  “Us. I remembered us, when we were teenagers.” Oh. My. God. “I thought the feelings I’ve been having for you since you showed up last night were merely more proof that I’d officially gone ’round the bend. But we were more than friends, weren’t we?” She swallowed. “We were right there.” She pointed at the couch. “And I was upset and afraid, like now. And you were…holding me then, too. We were…”

  She gestured between them.

  He went completely still. “We were what?”

  “Kissing,” she blurted out, her cheeks hot with embarrassment.

  If he didn’t say something soon, something to spare her from herself, she was quite simply going to burst into flames.

  Cole inhaled slowly, his focus dropping from her to the floor. He dug his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

  That was it? This rugged, take-no-prisoners-and-ask-questions-later man who’d, as a teenager, promised to protect her forever, then had barged back into her isolated world all grown up and refusing to leave, was being…bashful?

  Or was he working double-time to keep something from her, like Dawson was?

  She blinked. She had no idea where the suspicious thought had come from, but it felt unnervingly right. As right as a dash of ice water to her spinning senses. The question she had to hear him answer now slapped her like an open palm to her face.

  “What were we to each other, Cole?”

  They weren’t going to keep dancing around whatever he didn’t want to discuss about their past. Not if he was going to stay in her house.

  “Answer me.”

  His head snapped up. The look he blasted at her was a muddle of hurt and anger and need. She watched, warily entranced, as the grudge match played out. In the end, need prevailed. Cole’s bone-melting desire for her mirrored the avalanche of sensations that had ruled them as teenagers.

  “You said remembering too quickly might damage your mind more. I didn’t know what would be safe to tell you.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “We were lovers, Shaw. When we were teenagers, until your father banished me from your life, we were in love.”

  …

  Shaw looked magnificent, standing with her hands clenched at her sides, demanding her due. Whatever she’d remembered as Cole had felt her draw inward and away from his touch, she had returned from her withdrawal more off-balance but far more powerful. More like the self-reliant businesswoman she’d become since her father’s death.

  “We were…” Her blush was a sexy temptation. “My father…”

  She cocked her head to the side as if her mind hadn’t fully processed either Cole’s revelation or whatever else she’d recalled.

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” she said, switching gears, “that there was more to us than a platonic friendship?”

  Platonic? Cole edged farther away. It was the only way he could keep his hands off of her, rather than continuing the kisses she’d started in the hallway. And not stopping until she was naked and flushed and coming her brains out beneath him. As it was, he wanted her back in his arms, cuddled against his chest, the soft, lush feel of her hardening his body to the breaking point.

  Even when they’d been too young to do anything about it—she the beautiful daughter of a man who owned half the mountain, and he the rough-and-tumble son of the town drunk, running wild together through the woods where they’d found each other one fateful spring afternoon—there’d been something intense, almost desperate about their bond. There’d been no stopping their relationship from blooming into more over the years—much more, screw the fact that Shaw’s father and brother disapproved.

  “You already seemed skittish enough about having me here,” he reminded her, holding tight to his growing response to the passion-filled memories she’d dug up.

  “Because something about you felt…”

  “Wrong?” he asked at her hesitation.

  The best part of Cole had died the day she’d sided with her bastard of a father against him. He’d walked away from their mountain and never looked back. Not because of Old Man Cassidy’s threats, but because he couldn’t face Shaw and hear from her own mouth the piece-of-crap reasons why she’d turned her back on him. Reasons that didn’t matter anymore, now that she could no longer remember them.

  “No. Not wrong.” She walked back to her father’s chair and sat, the cruise ship–size desk now between them. “You felt…familiar but different, and I had no idea what that meant.”

  “Different?”

  “Than all the rest of this.” She waved at the office and the mansion beyond its paneled walls. “In the parlor last night, in the kitchen, and finally in here. None of it felt real or personal before.”

  “Before?” He sounded like a damn parrot, repeating everything back to her, but they were making unprecedented progress. He didn’t want to underestimate—o
r miss—a single thread of what was returning to her.

  “Before I woke and found you here, acting, feeling as if you belonged with me, when I could have sworn we’d never met, let alone been…”

  “Intimate?”

  It was too tame a word for what they’d shared. He was jumping off a dangerous cliff, taking them further down the road to exploring their teenage love affair. And he was dragging Shaw with him. But taking her in his arms again, an impulse he’d given in to after her impossibly arousing kisses in the hallway, had jump-started her mind this time. What else was waiting there, on the tip of her awareness, poised to secure her safety and her legal footing if only he could shake the memories loose?

  No way could he back off now. If anything, he had to push harder. Guilt over how much he was keeping from her churned in the pit of his stomach. But their twenty-four-hour grace period would be up too soon for him to take a lighter hand.

  “I trusted you.” Her unfocused gaze told him she was once again seeing the past rather than the world around them. “I was afraid of…someone. And you were going to face him for me, with me, and we kissed, and you promised you’d never leave me.”

  “I didn’t.” He braced his feet apart and snapped his hands behind his back, military style.

  At ease.

  Like hell.

  “You didn’t promise me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t leave.”

  She seemed to shrink in size behind the desk that was shielding her. “But we haven’t seen each other for how many years?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Why?” She was rubbing where the bullet had damn near taken her head off.

  “Why do you think you’re recalling this now?” he asked, the answer to his question far more valuable to her recovery. “Does your head hurt because you’re remembering?”

  “I don’t know.” She curled into the chair’s aged leather, her wariness deepening to brooding. “And yes, sometimes my head hurts when I try too hard to make sense of things. At the moment, everything seems to be hurting.”

  Cole retreated to the couch, cautious of her pain level. Her doctors had warned that the debilitating migraines she’d experienced since the shooting could return. She needed a bit of space. Some breathing room. They both did.

  He couldn’t afford to ignore the price tag that came with each new brush with her past. His job was to move her closer to being healthy, not to trigger another breakdown. They’d mine for more memories, but not until she was ready to dig deeper. There was nothing to gain from her burning out just as they were getting started.

  Good thing there was a reason he’d been grateful she’d led him toward her father’s study. First chance he got, he’d planned on checking it out. He doubted she had any conscious recollection of the possible weak point to the mansion’s security that lurked just over her shoulder.

  “You wanted to know earlier how I thought I could help you,” he said, anchoring things back to the present. “Since you understand a little more about why I might want to, are you still comfortable having me here?”

  “You’re not going to tell me about what I remembered or what happened between us?”

  “Beyond that I once cared deeply for you, and that I remain concerned for your welfare? Would it make a difference? Has anything anyone else told you about your life jarred the rest of your memories free?”

  “No.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her scar.

  “Then we’ll circle back to whatever you want to talk about later, when you’re feeling better. What matters at the moment is whether you’ll still let me help you determine what or who is threatening you in the present, and how he might get to you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Shaw couldn’t look at Cole sitting on the couch without thinking of them there, their bodies wrapped around each other, fighting to get closer, deeper, all the way into each other, to that place where they were one and never wanted to be apart.

  They’d been lovers once, she and the closed-down man Cole was turning back into. The same man who’d returned her kisses in the hallway as if he’d been craving them for years. Now, like him, she was supposed to switch off their history and forget the fact that once he’d been what she’d desired most?

  “How can you be so certain we can figure out what’s going on around here?” She managed a bland smile. Inside she was shaking.

  “I’ve had some basic training in investigation.” He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “I once knew this house as well as I do my own. I might remember something that would make a difference. That is, if whoever stashed you here doesn’t object to my interference.”

  Whoever stashed… “What makes you think I have to answer to anyone about what I do in my own home?” A surge of rebelliousness tightened her words at the thought of ever again asking Dawson permission to do anything.

  “Because I think when I came to the front door,” Cole said, “I interrupted a call between you and someone who wasn’t the electric company. But you haven’t decided yet whom to trust more—him or me. Am I right?”

  Her mouth parted, but no words came out. How had he known?

  He sat back again, making himself comfortable on the sagging couch. A dominant man in control of his environment. “As I said, I’ve been trained to notice clues and to string bits of information together into observations others dismiss as coincidence.”

  “In the military?” she asked, since he’d already said he wasn’t with the police.

  “Something like that.” He returned her stare.

  “So what does your training tell you about my nightmares? About someone possibly trying to hurt me, when the authorities think my attack was random? Everyone says I’m paranoid about the man with no face in my dream.” She rubbed her bandaged thumb across her thigh. “No one’s going to want to hear that now I think someone’s playing pranks on me or trying to gaslight me. What does your training tell you about that?”

  “Like I said before, you should trust your instincts.”

  He was looking at her as if he sensed precisely what her instincts were focused on, and how her body couldn’t stop feeling what wanting and having him had once been like.

  “What’s your gut telling you?” he asked while she took slow, even breaths, her entire body humming with awareness. “That’s where we’ll start looking for clues.”

  “It’s telling me no one’s giving me the whole truth about any of this, including you. That my memory’s holding out on me for reasons I don’t understand, even though it seems to have a soft spot where you’re concerned.” It was rewarding to see the answering awareness flash across his features before his expression smoothed out again. “My gut’s telling me not to trust anyone.”

  “I’ve given you no reason to be afraid of me.”

  She let out a breath. “No. But you’re hiding something.”

  “Why did you invite me back inside, then?” His eyes narrowed. “Why bring me to your father’s office, when we could have gone anywhere in the house to talk?”

  “I…I hate this room. But…”

  “Is there something here you wanted me to see?”

  The question stunned her, then just as quickly, it felt right. Just as Cole himself felt right, even though he was once again deflecting her questions right back at her.

  “Yeah, I think so,” she agreed reluctantly, allowing herself to be led into yet another conversation she hadn’t anticipated. “But what could it be?”

  Cole looked around the room, his eyes like blue lasers, seeing everything. A muscle along his jaw ticked as he concentrated. He got to his feet and rounded the desk, heading her way. He studied the dated computer that she assumed hadn’t been turned on in years, then continued to the corner of the office. His back to her, he used his fingers to trace along the seams of the wall
’s ancient oak paneling.

  She joined him, drawn as much by his quiet concentration as by the mystery of what he was doing. What was he looking for? What had she wanted him to see?

  Pressing against one of the panels, he dropped his gaze to the floor. She knelt, seeing closer up that the carpet was worn in an odd sort of arc pattern. A soft click was the only warning she got before the panel swung toward her, its bottom dragging along the worn patch.

  Shaw scrambled backward, rising to her feet and staring at the hidden door built into the outer wall. Cole was studying his discovery closely.

  “Did you know this was here?” he asked.

  “No.” She waited. He didn’t turn around. “But you did, didn’t you? Do you think someone might have been able to sneak inside through this?”

  His attention flicked to her, but only long enough to say, “Try and open it.” He moved behind her and waited. “I don’t want to get my prints on it.”

  “Prints?” She reached for the brass knob, then stopped. “Fingerprints?”

  “In case we discover there’s been a break-in, you’ll want to call the local authorities. I’m not interested in finding myself on their list of suspects.”

  She didn’t correct him by saying that if she called law enforcement, there wouldn’t be anything local about it. She tried the knob, turning it easily, but the door itself wouldn’t budge. That’s when she noticed the serious-looking deadbolt halfway up its face.

  “Key?” Cole asked.

  “You’re asking me?”

  She shuddered, though not because she thought the secret entrance was a threat. Clearly it could only be opened from the inside. But what other surprises might be lurking in her home, in her life, in her mind, while she stumbled around blindly, trapped by her ignorance?

  “How did you know this was here?” Her question came out shaky, when she wanted so much to sound and be strong in front of this man.

  His touch on her hand made her jump, but within seconds she’d intertwined her fingers around his.