by JB Lynn
The only person who hadn’t been by to see her was Bailey.
She lay back on her bed, eyes closed. She focused on the smell of the flowers that filled the room and did her best to ignore the beeping of the monitors she was hooked up to. The pain medication she was on was making her sleepy, but she refused to drift off. She knew Bailey would show up eventually, and she wanted to be awake when he did.
She sensed, rather than heard him. Snapping her eyes open she caught him turning around.
“Bay?” Her throat was still raw, her voice raspy.
He turned around to face her, but stayed in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Nice flowers.” He waved his hand at the gigantic bouquet of carnations that dwarfed the vases everyone else had brought. She smiled. Ginny knew that carnations had always been her favorite. She’d included a note that said “Math was never my strongest subject. If you’re the half sister of my half sister that means we’re quarter sisters, right?”
“Ginny went a little bit overboard.”
“They’re pretty.” He lingered in the entry, seemingly unwilling to commit to entering.
She’d been waiting all day for his visit, but he didn’t seem very eager to see her. Trying to ignore the stab of disappointment she felt, she waved him into the room with her good arm.
Hands stuffed in his pockets, head hanging, he shuffled in. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
She shook her head, trying to get rid of the fuzzies caused by the pharmaceuticals coursing through her system. He wasn’t making any sense. She’d been waiting all day to see him. “Come closer.”
Stepping nearer, he wrapped his fingers around the top of the bed rail. He looked down at her, his head bowed by the weight of grief and torment he now bore. She covered his hand with her own, trying to take away some of his pain.
“I’m so sorry, Em.”
“You saved me. I knew you would. I knew you’d come.”
He shook his head, unwilling to accept her gratitude, preferring instead to beat himself up. “I should have known. I should have figured it out.”
Now she knew what was wrong. He blamed himself, just as he had when they were ten. Back then, she’d stepped on a hornet’s nest as she tried to get away from him during a game of freeze tag. He must have apologized a hundred times for something that had been her mistake, and given her his ice cream for a week. If he’d been torn up about a couple of stings, she couldn’t imagine how he was torturing himself now.
“It wasn’t your fault, Bay. I’m the one who insisted on not telling the FBI that he had Laurie. I’m the one who adamantly insisted on talking to my father. I’m the one who made the idiotic choice to leave with Williams…William. It wasn’t your fault.”
“You could have died!” He tried to wrench his hand away, but she held on tight, despite the fact that the movement caused pain to radiate through her injured shoulder. He looked down at her pale fingers curled around his. His voice shook from his emotion. “There wasn’t enough time. I saw him…I saw the knife…and…and…And there was so much blood, and you were so weak…and I knew I’d lost you.”
“But you didn’t. I’m right here.”
She tugged his hand, forcing him to bend down closer.
“So what are you trying to say? That now that this whole thing is done, I don’t mean everything to you anymore?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me!” A terrible pressure built in her chest as she watched raw pain contort Bailey’s features. She’d been thinking everything was going to be better from here on, but if his expression were any indication, things were only going to get worse.
“My father knew who’d hurt you and he didn’t do anything about it.”
It felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out. She blinked up at him, trying to make sense of the revelation. If that was true, none of this had to have happened. The nightmare could have ended long ago. “He knew?”
Bailey hung his head as though he’d been the one keeping the horrible secret for all these years, as though he’d harbored the monster. “Shauna’s accident…it wasn’t an accident. My dad hit her and then threw her down the stairs to cover it up.”
“Oh, Bay.” She reached up and touched his cheek, not knowing what she could possibly say that could erase the pain etched into his face. “And then that day in the woods, when he found out it was his brother who’d taken you, he let him go, because Oliver threatened to spill what he knew about Shauna.”
“That bastard!”
Bailey flinched, but nodded. “I’m sorry, Em. I’m so sorry. For all of it.”
“But it wasn’t your fault.”
He nodded, but she could see that he didn’t believe her.
She had to get that through to him. She could see the way he was torturing himself. She could feel the way the sins of his family were eating away at him. Her throat burned, but she had to get through to him. “Listen to me, Bay. I know it’s a shock, and I know you’ve lost a lot, but you have to know, you have to understand, you haven’t lost me.”
“I never had you, Em,” he whispered. “We had one night, but you made it clear that’s all it was. And I understand. I really do. You’re going back to your life. There’s nothing here for you.”
Releasing his hand, she reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look deep into her eyes. “You’re here. My sister’s here. My life is here.”
He stared at her as though he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You can’t mean that. You’re upset. You shouldn’t be making any hasty decisions, certainly not life-changing ones.”
“Hasty? I’ve spent most of my life wanting to be with you, Bailey O’Neil. We’ll have to work the logistics out. I’ll still have to go to the city for client meetings and things like that, but for the most part I can probably do most of my work wherever I can plug in my laptop.”
“You’d do that for me?” The wonder in his voice was enough to break her heart.
“I’d do that for us. Now kiss me, you idiot.”
That, he didn’t need to be told twice. Taking care not to lean too heavily on her, he kissed her like it was their first time. Tentatively at first, testing, exploring. She deepened the kiss, showing him the truth behind her words.
Finally she fell back on the bed. Smiling up at him she said, “It’s good to be home.”
About the Author
Although fascinated by things dark and twisted, JB is also enamored of tales of love conquering all. These dual interests manifest themselves in her stories as dangerous villains and the heroines and heroes who must defeat them.
JB tends to get her best ideas while walking. While it might appear that she walks alone, she’s usually conversing with one or more of her characters. This leads to her getting strange looks when she’s addressed by real, living people, as she tends to answer them with “we” or “our.”
Besides writing novels, JB trains to walk half-marathons. (She’d love to say run, but really she walks and talks to her characters.) She likens physical training to the novel-writing process. Both require discipline and hard work, but there’s fun to be had along the way, and there’s a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when crossing a finish line or typing The End.
In addition to writing and walking, JB has a great love of her husband, dog, coffee, purple ink, spiral notebooks, running gear, hot showers and ’80s music. Given enough time, all of these things will eventually show up in her books.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9174-8
&nb
sp; Copyright © 2011 by JB Lynn
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
