“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Don’t even try. They found you at the scene. At the bottom of the canyon. Two hundred feet directly below the wrecked car. They measured your blood alcohol level. You and the Porsche both stank of tequila. You had the fucking car keys. Your blood was all over the seat and the steering wheel. What gives?”
“So you never got my letters.”
“You mean, physical letters, from the post office? No, I did not get letters from you. I left Shaw’s Crossing while you were still in jail, and I didn’t come back for years.”
“I wrote to you while I was in jail,” he said. “I wrote afterwards, too. The emails bounced, and the phone number was out of service, and you blocked me on the socials, so I wrote letters to the only address I had. I guess your parents intercepted them.”
“I wouldn’t have read them even if they hadn’t,” she said.
He nodded. “So you never heard my side of the story.”
“What side? You have no side. The facts speak for themselves. What could you possibly say?” Her throat felt tight to the point of pain.
“The facts aren’t the whole picture. The facts they gave you are incomplete.”
She slowed to bump over the noisy cattle guard. “Fine,” she said. “Complete them, then. Entertain me. Tell me your side. Start with that night at my house. After our fight, when you took Dad’s car keys off the pegboard by the kitchen door.”
“I never took those keys,” Eric said. “I’m not a thief. Or an idiot.”
Demi let out a slow sigh, gritting her teeth. “And so it begins.”
“Hear me out, Demi. Please.”
“I will,” she said, through her teeth. “Go ahead. Let me have it.”
“I was set up,” Eric said. “The whole damn thing was staged.”
She glanced at him, bewildered. “Excuse me? Staged? By who?”
“Just let me tell you how it went for me. Then draw your own conclusions.”
“Fine. Tell me.”
“After our night together, I walked out to the car,” he said. “I found all four tires on the Monster slashed. I should have just called my brothers, but it was four in the morning and I couldn’t bear the shit I knew they would give me. So I hesitated.”
She nodded. “And then?”
“Then I saw a black Porsche coming up behind me. Just like your dad’s. It pulled over, and it was Boyd Nevins driving. He offered me a ride to the crossroads.”
“Boyd Nevins?” She gave him a startled glance. “The hell?”
“Seemed strange to me, too. He gave us no end of hell back in high school, so it was weird that he would offer me a ride. But I was tired and miserable and I didn’t want to hear what Anton and Mace were going to say. I wasn’t thinking straight. Plus, I wanted to get the Monster away from your house before your folks came back from their trip. I didn’t want to make more trouble for you.”
“And you drank, in the car? They told me it was drenched with tequila.”
“I did not drink,” he said. “The tequila in my system was only what I drank when I was with you. But things got strange really fast. Boyd asked if he could use my phone. He made a call, and started going through the streets downtown at insane speeds. He ran a light at the crossroads and went up onto the Narrows Bridge at ninety-eight. Then he threw my phone out the window on the bridge. Over the railing and into the river.”
Demi’s mind went blank. Of all things she might have expected to hear, this was not one of them. It was full of implications she couldn’t begin to process yet.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “And then?”
“I told him to stop and let me out and he sped up even more. I’d given him the tequila bottle when I got in, and he was chugging it and laughing like a lunatic. I thought maybe he was on coke or meth. He had the look.”
“Eric, that’s insane,” she said.
“I know it is. At that speed, if I’d tried to take control of the car I would have killed us both. He got up over a hundred and ten. Then I saw the gloves.”
“He wore gloves? In July?”
“Latex gloves,” Eric said grimly.
She shook her head, and couldn’t stop shaking it. The things he said wouldn’t go in. Wouldn’t process. They were breaking up into a confused jumble. Bottlenecked.
Everything he said was just…senseless.
“We got all the way up to the trailhead at Peyton State Park. He pulled into the parking lot and got out. Smashed the tequila bottle down on the door of the Porsche. He got into a pickup that was parked there and drove away, leaving me soaked with tequila. With no phone. With your dad’s Porsche.”
Demi regretted opening this can of worms with everything in her. But what the fuck had she expected from Eric, with his track record? Sincerity? An apology? Hah.
True to form, he’d given her a load of bullshit. He blamed everyone but himself. There would be no closure or forgiveness. Just more stupid, senseless lies.
“I knew that I was going to be accused of stealing that car,” Eric went on. “I couldn’t call anyone. I was afraid to leave the keys and walk away. It would have taken me hours on foot to get back to town. I was even more afraid of getting caught driving it.” He stopped, eyeing her. “Demi?” he prompted. “You still with me?”
“Finish your story, Eric.”
“I decided to risk getting closer to town, at least to the nearest phone, so I could call the cops. My plan was to call the cops from the Gas&Go. Call Bristol and throw myself on his mercy. So I took the Porsche out onto the highway.”
He stopped speaking for so long, she gave him an impatient glance. “And?”
“A big Humvee came up behind me and started ramming the car.”
“Excuse me?” she said blankly. “What the hell did you just say?”
“You heard me,” he said. “I went as fast as I could. The bastard finally knocked me off the road. The car caught on the trees on the side of the canyon. That saved my life. I was hanging there, upside down, when I heard those guys from the Humvee climbing down toward me. They were talking about finishing the job. So I opened the car door and fell. I woke up at the Granger Valley Hospital, all fucked up. And under arrest.”
It was clearly her turn to say something, but she had nothing.
She blurted out the first words that came to her. “Eric, do you think I’m stupid?”
His head shook slowly. “I think you are anything but.”
“But you still expect me to believe this? That someone tried to…to kill you?”
“I don’t expect a damn thing.” He sounded weary. “I know how crazy it sounds. I just wanted you to hear the truth from me at least once. Nobody else believed me either. Not Chief Bristol, not the judge, not my public defender. Not even Otis. He wouldn’t speak to me for three years afterwards. Only Mace and Anton believed me. Boyd had a rock-solid alibi and they had all the time in the world to clean up the crime scene—”
“Who is ‘they?’”
He shrugged. “Whoever put Boyd up to this.”
She took a deep breath and just said it. “Sounds like you’re implying that it was my dad.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Means, motive and opportunity,” he said finally. “The set-up was perfect. I’d been in the house where the keys were kept. You and I had argued right before I left. I had good reason to be angry at your dad. I looked bad.”
“Eric,” she said. “I know you two hate each other, but this is way over the top.”
“Seemed severe to me, too,” he said. “As much as he hated me being intimate with you. But that’s what happened.”
“You’re saying that my father organized a hit,” she said. “That he arranged for his own car to be destroyed. That he paid somebody to run you off the road. You could have been killed. You almost were. Which would have made my father a murderer.”
“I know it sounds improbable,” he said.
“Oh, no. You left ‘improbable’ way back there in the dust, Eric. You’re no
w squarely in the realm of ridiculous, offensive, insane, and shut-the-fuck-up.”
“I understand that you might not want to—”
“I have no illusions about my dad, believe me,” she said. “I wasn’t even all that surprised at what you told me at the café earlier. I know he’s been mixed up in some shady things in the past. But my dad’s brand of misbehavior falls short of murder. He’s a guy who likes money, power, status. Not killing. Never speak about this to me again.”
“Okay.” He looked away. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. There was no point in upsetting you after all these years.”
Bitter laughter shook her. “Oh, please. Are you for real?”
“Yes, absolutely. To a fault. I don’t tell lies even when I should. I couldn’t plead guilty to a thing I didn’t do, not even for a shorter sentence. I thought about it, but it would have broken me.”
“Your life didn’t get broken,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when your dad dropped the charges. He’s the last person in the world that I would expect to have a change of heart.”
“He didn’t,” Demi said coolly. “He would have left you to rot in prison with the greatest of pleasure. That was me.”
His head whipped around, gaze fixed on her. “What do you mean, you?”
“Dad and I struck a deal. He agreed to drop the charges. If I gave up the internship, and cooking school, and accepted a job at Shaw Paper Products, you walked free.”
Eric looked dumbfounded. “Holy fuck. Demi…fuck. I never knew—”
“Of course you didn’t know. It was none of your damn business. But we’ve gone far enough down memory lane tonight. Let’s drop it, okay? I learned some important things back then. Maybe you did, too. Let’s put a rock on it.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Why do that for me? You had no reason to think I deserved it.”
She shook her head. “Damned if I know. I’ve been asking myself that question ever since. But it’s fine now. I like my restaurant, my house, this town. I like my life. It’s all good. I have no regrets.”
“If you say so. Still, thanks. You saved my life by doing that. I just never knew you paid such a high price for it.”
“Oh, don’t overdo it,” she snapped. “It’s not like he banished me to the salt mines.”
Eric shut up after that. After too much quiet, she looked over and found him was studying her intently, as if he were trying to memorize her.
“What?” she snapped. “What is it now?”
“Your hair,” he said. “I’m glad it’s still so long. That’s how I remember you. All that beautiful wavy brown hair flowing down your back. Curly ringlets bouncing at the bottom.”
Demi cleared her throat. “Eric,” she murmured. “Don’t.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop.”
“Actually, I was thinking of cutting it really short. A pixie cut. Easier for work.”
A smile flashed across his face. “What, to punish me?”
“I see you still have that bad habit of making it all about you,” she said. “I don’t take your likes and dislikes into account when I groom myself.”
“Of course not.” He sounded almost amused at her snark.
They had turned the corner onto the last stretch of road, and the silence took on a hot, buzzy, brain-melting charge that made her search vainly in her mind for a change of subject. Something neutral, that wouldn’t explode in her face.
She saw the fenced field that marked the beginning of Otis’s property, and it came to her at last. “Oh. There’s something I wanted to tell you, before I forget again.”
“Yes?”
“When I found Otis that morning, there was a brief period that he seemed lucid, before the ambulance got there,” she said. “He grabbed my hand and kept on saying the same word, over and over. He said ‘lock, lock, lock.’ He seemed anxious for me to understand. Does that mean anything to you?”
Eric thought about it for a moment, and shook his head. “Can’t think of anything,” he said. “Just that I wish I’d been there for him.”
“I’m glad that I was,” she said.
“Do you play the martyr often?”
She bristled. “Excuse me? What do you mean by that?”
“It seems to be a theme. Sacrificing your dreams to get me out of jail. Driving miles of bad road to deliver pastry to lonesome seniors. Staying in the ICU with someone who isn’t even your own relative. Throwing a reception in Otis’s honor at your own expense and refusing to be reimbursed. Did you do that for him just because my brothers and I didn’t?”
Her spine stiffened in outrage. “Are you feeling reproached, Eric?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Tough shit for you,” she said. “I will continue to do my own thing with no regard for how you feel about it. Don’t bother feeling obligated or guilty. I’m a busy woman. I won’t even notice.”
“Ouch,” he murmured. “Burn.”
“You’ll forget all about it in no time back in the big city. Where did you finally end up, anyhow?”
“I have apartments in a few different cities,” he said. “I move around a lot for work. San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Los Angeles. I guess you could call San Francisco my home base.”
She whistled. “Seriously?”
“I travel a lot.” He sounded defensive. “And I don’t like hotels. Not enough privacy.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me. So you’re leaving soon, right?”
“Yeah, probably tomorrow afternoon. Day after tomorrow at the latest. I have appointments with the estate lawyer and the real estate agent, and then I’m gone. This place…” He shook his head. “It makes me do dumb things.”
“Like bar fights?”
His gaze slid over her body. “Among other things.”
They had reached Otis’s driveway, and Demi’s headlights reflected off the back of a parked car. She braked, and stared at the gleaming black Porsche in stunned disbelief.
“Holy shit,” she said. “This is your car?”
“It’s just a car, Demi.” But he didn’t look at her as he said it.
“Seriously? With all the thousands of makes and models of cars to choose from, you chose an exact replica of my dad’s Porsche? The one you almost killed yourself crashing? It’s even the same fucking color!”
“Yeah. But my leather interior is black, not cream.”
“Oh, stop. Why would you get the very make and model of the car that screwed up your life so badly? That’s twisted.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like armor, I guess. Like riding into this town in a tank. I need to make it clear to everyone that I don’t need to steal other people’s shit. I can buy my own.”
“I should think so. That car must have cost, what, three hundred thousand bucks?”
“With all the extras, more like three-fifty,” he admitted.
She was taken aback. “So you’re rich. Of course. You designed Aion, Eos, Nyx. You own homes in four different cities. You can afford that car, and ten more like it.”
“I do okay.”
She rolled her eyes. “That Porsche is a big, expensive chip on your shoulder.”
“I suppose. Not a damn thing I can do about it.”
She parked right in front of that obscenity of a car and killed the engine, careful not to look in the rearview mirror. She was going to have to put the Porsche completely out of her mind to make this work. As well as this entire train-wreck of a conversation.
Because in spite of all the crazy bullshit she’d just heard, she was still going to do this. Deliberately, and in the face of her own good sense. She knew who this lying, delusional bastard was. What he was capable of. And she still wanted him in her bed.
One last time. On her terms. She would use him, exactly the way he had used her. Then she would move on, and let him go for good.
Then she would finally be done.
They sat in
the darkness. The air hummed with the things she’d forbidden him to say. But he wasn’t making a move on her.
Damn. She could feel the sexual tension. It was thick enough to cut. She’d counted on him being a selfish, oversexed opportunist. That he would come on to her as a matter of course. That, at least, should have been a sure thing.
Then again. She’d just scolded him brutally. Told him in ten different ways that he was a delusional asshole and a lying prick. He could be forgiven for deciding she was more trouble than she was worth.
God knows, he wouldn’t be the first to come to that conclusion.
Or maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe the truth was, after seven years, he could take it or leave it. And he’d decided to leave it. His prerogative.
Keep it dignified, girl. You don’t need the worthless bastard. You’re fine.
“Get out of the car,” she said abruptly.
Eric didn’t move. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Which tells me everything I need to know. If you don’t have the balls to make a move on me now, there’s no point in me being here. Get the fuck out, Eric. Go back to your fancy luxurious life and don’t try to—”
Her words cut off into a gasp as he kissed her.
8
Demi’s lithe body vibrated with emotion. He slid his fingers into the thick, glossy hair at the back of her head, and her silky locks slid luxuriously between his fingers. Amazing softness. Sweet, mysterious scents. The deep shiver of response in her body.
She wanted this. In spite of hating him. In spite of everything.
He tasted the sweet, tender heat of her mouth, his lips moving slowly over hers as he waited for another cue. In the darkness, he couldn’t read her expression. His hand closed around her hair, but he didn’t pull her toward him. Not yet.
He had to be so fucking careful. Every word, every move was fraught with danger. Charged with need. The stakes impossibly high.
As bad ideas went, this one took the prize. She hated him. She believed the absolute worst of him. He was doing his best to armor himself against that.
But he couldn’t keep his guard up if he was fucking her.
He didn’t speak. The way things were going for him tonight, it was better to shut up and just let the pull of unsatisfied lust that still throbbed between them speak for him.
Headlong Page 8
