Witness

by Beverly Barton

  “I had no idea Daddy could have done anything so—”

  “You didn’t go crying to your Daddy?” All these years he had been so sure Deborah had lied to her father, that she had made him believe that, at the very least, Ashe had seduced her, and at the worst, had taken her by brute force.

  “I didn’t tell my father anything.” Deborah scooted to the far side of the car, her back up against the door, she and Ashe glaring at each other in the semidarkness.

  “Why the hell lie to me now?” He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. God, help him, he never thought he would feel such bitter anger again, that confronting her with what she’d done would resurrect the hatred he’d felt—for Wallace Vaughn, for the whole town of Sheffield, and, yes, for Deborah herself.

  Deborah lifted her feet up on tiptoes, tensing her legs as she ran her hands up and down the tops of her thighs. “I never told Daddy about our…about our making love that night. I told my mother.” I had to tell her. I was seventeen and pregnant by a man who didn’t love me or want me. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “You told Miss Carol?”

  “I needed someone to talk to about what had happened.” About the fact that I was carrying your child. “Who else would I have gone to other than my own mother?”

  “Did you tell your mother that I’d forced you?” Cold shivers covered Ashe like a blanket of frost spreading across the earth on a winter night.

  “No. I told my mother the truth, all of it. She’d known, of course, that I’d left the country club with you that night and she knew why.”

  “I’m surprised your father didn’t hunt us down.”

  “He didn’t know I was with you. He didn’t see me leave,” Deborah said. “Mother told him I was spending the night with a girlfriend after the engagement party.”

  “I know Miss Carol often kept the complete truth from your father in order to maintain peace, so why did she feel it necessary to tell him about what had happened between you and me that night?”

  Because I was pregnant! “I was very upset, very unhappy. Mother thought she was doing the right thing by telling Daddy. She couldn’t have known what he’d do. And I never knew anything about what he did. Obviously, Daddy realized what a mistake he’d made. You were never arrested. If you had been, I would have told the truth. I would have made them understand that what happened that night was my fault, not yours.”

  “Deborah?”

  “Well, it was, wasn’t it? I mean, I did throw myself at you and practically beg you to make love to me, didn’t I?”

  “If I’d been more of a man and less a boy that night, I’d have turned you down and saved us both a lot of misery.”

  “And that’s what the memory of that night has been for you, hasn’t it, a misery?” Deborah shut her eyes, capturing her tears beneath closed lids.

  Dear God, no! The results had been a misery, but not that night. Never that night! “No, honey, that’s not true. The memory of that night is bittersweet for me.”

  “More bitter than sweet.” Swallowing her tears, she lowered her head, wrapped one arm across her stomach and cupped the side of her face in her other hand. “That’s why you left town, wasn’t it? To get away from me?”

  “I left town because your father and the D.A. gave me no other choice.” Ashe slid across the seat, grabbed Deborah by the shoulders and shook her gently several times. “Look at me, dammit.” With her head still bowed, she raised her eyes to meet his. “Your father told me that if I didn’t leave town and never come back, he’d make sure I did time for rape. He wanted me out of your life for good.”

  “No, he wouldn’t have… He knew. Oh, Ashe, he knew.”

  “He knew what?” Ashe gripped her shoulders, tightening his hold when she didn’t immediately respond.

  “He knew I was—” She’d almost said pregnant with your baby. “He knew I loved you, that I would never have testified against you, that I would have made a fool of myself to protect you.”

  A searing pain ripped through Ashe, the hot, cauterizing pain of truth, killing the festering infection of lies and suspicions, preventing him from clinging to past resentments.

  “Dear God, Deborah. All these years I’ve thought…” He pulled her into his arms. She trembled, and he knew she was on the verge of tears, that she was holding them in check, being strong. He stroked her back; she laid her head on his chest.

  She had not betrayed him. She hadn’t even told her father, only her mother. She had never accused him of forcing her or seducing her. Lies. All lies. Wallace Vaughn’s lies to force Ashe out of Deborah’s life. Had the old man been that afraid that sooner or later Ashe would destroy Deborah’s life?

  Ashe found himself kissing the side of her face, along her hairline, one hand continuing to stroke her back while he threaded the fingers of his other hand through her hair, caressing her tenderly.

  “Have you hated me all these years, Ashe?” she asked, her voice a whisper against his chest.

  “I’ve hated you. I’ve hated myself. Hell, I’ve hated just about everyone and everything associated with my past.” When she gazed up at him, he dotted her forehead with kisses. “But I never hated what we shared that night, the feelings inside me when we made love. It had never been like that for me before.” He swallowed hard. “And it’s never been that way for me again. Not ever.”

  “Oh, Ashe.” She slipped her arms around him, burrowing her body into his, seeking and finding a closer joining.

  He took her mouth like a dying man clinging to life, as if without the taste of her he could not go on. She accepted the kiss, returning it full measure, her hands clawing at his back, inching their way up beneath his jacket, yanking his shirt from his slacks, making contact with his naked flesh. Ashe thrust his tongue deeper into her mouth, their tongues mating furiously.

  Breathless, their lips separated, but they clung to each other, Deborah unbuttoning Ashe’s shirt, Ashe lifting Deborah’s sweater up and under her arms.

  “I’ve wanted you since that first day I came back to town.” He nuzzled her neck with his nose as he lifted his hand to her lace-covered breast. “I’ve called myself every kind of fool, but nothing’s eased this ache inside me.”

  She curled her index finger around a swirl of dark chest hair, then leaned over to kiss one tiny nipple. Ashe groaned. “I hated you for making me want you again,” she said. “I swore no one would ever hurt me the way you did, and here I am throwing myself at you again as if I were seventeen.”

  “No, honey, no.” He took her face in both his hands, looking deep into her eyes, smiling his irresistible smile. “This works both ways. I want you and you want me. Neither of us are kids. We’re two responsible adults who are as frustrated as hell.”

  She laughed. “Ashe, I don’t know if I can handle this, what I’m feeling. It scares me. It scares me more now than it did when I was seventeen.” She circled his neck with her arms, pressing her cheek against his. “When I was seventeen I was so in love with you that nothing we did seemed wrong. I didn’t know the first thing about sex. Now…well, now I’m aching with wanting you. It’s different now. It’s—”

  “It’s right this time, honey,” he said against her lips. “No fairy tales, no declarations of undying love, just a man and a woman who want each other desperately. Mutual desire.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Mutual desire.” You’re wrong, she wanted to shout. It isn’t all that different now. I’m still in love with you and you still don’t return that love.

  “Let’s vanquish all those bad memories,” he said. “Let’s lay the past to rest. Tonight.”

  His kiss was less frantic this time, more tender and giving, yet as hot and needy as the one before. There was no way to make him understand that she could never lay the past to rest, that Allen was the embodiment of that night so long ago when a young and foolish girl had given herself to a man who didn’t love her.

  Ashe held her in his arms, burying his face in her neck, breathing in the
sweet fragrance of her hair. “We can’t make love back at your house and I know you don’t want to make love here, in the car, the way we did that night. Where can we go, honey? A motel room seems cheap and I want this night to be special for you—for us.”

  “You’re wrong about my not wanting to make love here and now, in the car,” she said. “I do.”

  “Why would you want to—”

  “I’m not sure I can explain how I feel, but… Well, it would somehow validate that first time. I know it sounds crazy, but…I need for us to make love here, now, in the car, the way we did that night when… Please, Ashe, make love to me.”

  “That’s exactly what you said to me that night.” And damn his rotten soul, he hadn’t been able to resist her. She had been the sweetest temptation he’d ever known—and she still was.

  “I guess I’m still begging.” A lone tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

  Ashe kissed the teardrop. “No, Deborah, I’m the one doing the begging this time. I’m the one who’ll die if I can’t have you. I’m the one willing to do anything to make you happy, to see you smile, to make your forget.”

  He actually remembered every word she’d said to him that night when she’d told him she wanted to make him happy, wanted to make him forget Whitney, wanted to make him smile again. She had pleaded with him to make love to her, saying she’d die if he didn’t.

  “You remember what I said.”

  “Every word.” He lifted her sweater up and off, tossing it into the back seat, then unhooked her bra and eased it off her shoulders. “And I remember how you looked and how you felt.” He covered both breasts with his hands and planted a row of kisses from her collarbone to her shoulder. “And the smell of you. My sweet, innocent Deborah.”

  He licked the tip of her breast; she moaned. He unsnapped and unzipped her slacks; she shoved his jacket off his shoulders. Ashe removed his shoulder holster, laying it on the dashboard before removing his shirt.

  She kissed his chest, tiny, loving nicks. He tugged her slacks down and off her legs, throwing them on top of her sweater. She shivered when he dipped his hand beneath the elastic of her silky panties and cupped her buttocks, lifting her up and over him as he slid down onto the seat, his head braced against the armrest on the door.

  While he suckled at her breasts, his fingers delved between the delicate folds of her body, finding the sensitive, hidden peak. She unzipped his trousers and reached inside to cover his arousal with the palm of her hand. Their kisses grew hotter, harder, longer, as they moved to the rhythm of nature’s mating music, their bodies straining for closer and closer contact.

  Lifting his hips, Ashe removed his wallet, then tugged his trousers downward and kicked them into the floorboard. “I’m dying,” he groaned. “I wanted to wait, to take more time, to—”

  Leaning over him, she covered his mouth, silencing him with the fury of her kiss. He ran his hands up and down, over her shoulders, down her back, pulling at her panties until she helped him remove them. He eased her over and onto her back, drawing her body beneath his as he ripped off his briefs, sheathed himself and positioned her for his possession.

  “Now, honey? Now!” He was fast losing control.

  “Yes, now!”

  He plunged into her, lifting her hips, delving deep and hard. She gripped his shoulders, rising to meet his demands. Sliding her legs up his until she reached his hips, she whispered his name over and over, telling him with the tone of her voice and little moans of pleasure that she was near the brink. He didn’t want this to end, wanted it to go on forever, but knew he couldn’t last much longer. The pleasure was too great, too intense to slow the upward spiral toward completion.

  “It’s too good, honey. Too good.”

  He felt her tightening around him. She clasped him like a tight fist. Crying out, she quivered in his arms as spasm after spasm of fulfillment racked her body. His release came hard and fast, shaking him to the core of his being.

  He cried out, losing himself in her, kissing her as they shivered from the aftershocks of such a powerful loving.

  Lifting himself, Ashe pulled Deborah up off the seat and into his arms, holding her against him, listening to her rapid breathing.

  “I want to make love to you again,” he told her. “Tonight. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow.”

  She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t. She knew he was telling her that, this time, there would be no rejection and no regrets. She lifted her face to him, glorying in the feel of his arms around her, the passion in his consuming kiss.

  DAWN SPREAD A honeyed pink glow across the horizon. When Ashe parked the Caddy in the driveway, Deborah awoke. Lifting her head from his shoulder, she smiled.

  “It’s 5:40,” he said. “Mazie is going to be up and about any time now.”

  “Think she’ll catch us sneaking in?”

  “Would you care if she does?” Ashe opened the car door and assisted Deborah. Wrapping his arm around her, he led her to the front door.

  “She’d probably be shocked. She’s not used to me sneaking into the house at all hours.”

  Ashe unlocked the door. They walked into the entrance hall, arm in arm. “What do you usually do, stay overnight at your lover’s house?”

  Shadowy morning light coming through the windows illuminated the stairs. Deborah stopped dead still in the middle of the staircase.

  “I haven’t had any lovers,” she said, then pulled out of Ashe’s arms and ran up to the landing.

  He caught her just as she flung open her sitting room door, whirling her around to face him, pulling her into his arms. “What do you mean you haven’t had any lovers?”

  “There’s never been anyone else. Only you.” Lowering her head, she looked down at the floor.

  He lifted her chin in the curve of his thumb and forefinger. “Honey, I—”

  “I never fell in love again, that’s all. I hoped that sooner or later the right guy would come along and I’d be ready, but it just didn’t happen.”

  “Just Mr. Wrong again, huh?”

  “No, Ashe, not Mr. Wrong. Just not Mr. Right.” She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him, then stepped back and smiled. “This time we’re lovers. Remember? Mutual desire?”

  “You’d better get in your room and lock me out or we’ll be right in the middle of some mutual desire any minute now.”

  “Good night, then.” She laughed. “Or should I say good morning.”

  “Next time, we’re going to have to find someplace else to make love.” He rubbed the small of his back. “I’m too old to do it in a car, even a big Caddy.”

  “Next time,” she whispered to herself. Next time. She knew she would never be able to resist him and that for him this was only an affair. But not for her. She was already so in love with Ashe McLaughlin she couldn’t bear for him to leave her.

  He kissed her with a passion that told her that even if he wasn’t in love with her, leaving her was as difficult for him as it was for her. Releasing her, he shoved her into her room and closed the door. She took a deep breath, turned and raced into her bedroom, falling in a heap on her bed. Hugging herself, she rolled into a ball and closed her eyes.

  This was what she had dreaded since the moment she’d walked in and seen Ashe talking to her mother in the living room. And, if she was honest with herself, this was what she had wanted to happen. No matter how hard she had tried to deny it, she still loved Ashe McLaughlin. She had never truly stopped loving him.

  What on earth was she going to do now? She had rushed headlong into an affair with her son’s father. How could she continue lying to Ashe, keeping the truth about his child from him? The longer she waited to tell him, the more difficult it would be—for both of them. But did she dare tell him? Would he understand? Or would he hate her for keeping his son from him all these years?

  CHAPTER TEN

  “PLEASE, TELL US, MS. Vaughn, what happened when you took that wrong turn off Cotton Lane?” the district attorne
y asked.

  “I realized I’d gotten off on the wrong road and was looking for a place to turn around.” Deborah sat straight, her hands folded in her lap. “I noticed a truck pulled off the road. One man jumped out of the truck, but I couldn’t see his face. There were two other men behind the truck, one holding a gun to the other’s head.”

  Deborah’s stomach tightened into a knot; she gripped her damp hands together. Glancing out into the courtroom she sought Ashe. Their gazes met and held. She took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Vaughn?” District Attorney Jim Bitterman spoke softly, his voice a light tenor, a distinct contrast to his rugged, almost ugly face and wiry, muscular body.

  “Yes.” Deborah kept her vision focused on Ashe for several seconds longer, gaining strength from his presence.

  “Will you continue, please?”

  “The man holding the gun was Lon Sparks.”

  “Objection, your honor,” the defense attorney, Leland Prater shouted, rising from his seat and moving his short, rotund body around the desk. “Ms. Vaughn was not acquainted with Mr. Sparks and therefore could hardly have recognized him.”

  “Ms. Vaughn later identified Mr. Sparks from a photograph, your honor,” Jim Bitterman said.

  “Overruled,” Judge Heath said.

  “Please continue.” District Attorney Bitterman stood directly in front of Deborah. “Tell the jury what you saw.”

  “Lon Sparks shot the man in the head.” Deborah closed her eyes momentarily, the memory of that dreadful sight closing in around her, filling her with the sense of fear she’d known in those horrific seconds when she’d witnessed the murder.

  Jim Bitterman allowed her to continue recalling the events at her own pace. Leland Prater, long known as an old bag of wind and one of the most crooked lawyers in the area, objected every chance he got, deliberately unnerving Deborah as much as possible. But she did not waver in her testimony, not even when Prater cross-examined her.