by Cara Colter
Hadn't her father called, in the middle of the chaos, to see if she was all right?
He'd called way before the press got hold of the story. Had it been he who suggested the ranch check the water as the source of the illness? But why would he do that, if he had really poisoned the water in the first place?
At the last minute, had he decided to save her?
He'd made it evident ever since she took this job that he felt it was beneath her, a waste of her talent and brains.
How he had scorned her wanting to help the children. Pollyanna. Bleeding Heart. Goody-Two-Shoes. Those were his comments about her.
His comments about the kids had been even more cutting, more cruel. Junior thugs, he'd called the boys from The Shack, eating at the government trough, in between sessions of preying on society. He'd said even worse things about the girls at Emily's House.
She had tried to tell him how she felt, but he had brushed her comments aside. And she really hadn't given what he said another thought. Spouting off was just her dad. He was cynical. And hard. And cold. He had a mean streak.
But was he dangerous?
Surely, for all his faults he could not poison children. His own daughter.
"Holly, come back, sweetheart. Where are you?"
She tried to focus on Blake, as if he would be something solid to hold on to. "The dream," she murmured reluctantly. "I've had the most awful dream."
"The one about the monster poisoning the water? Tell me about it again," he said, his voice so tender, so concerned about her, the voice she had waited her whole life to hear.
"I can't," she whispered.
"Okay, think about something else, then. Look at the sun coming in the windows. It's past nine. Do you want me to cook you breakfast? I make a mean Spanish omelet, and I bet you have all the ingredients."
How she appreciated him trying to bring her back, trying to comfort her. If she was not mistaken, that was a brand-new light shining in his eyes.
Love.
Looking at him, Holly felt as though her heart were breaking into jagged little pieces. The hard, cold truth was she was completely unworthy of him. Because she did not know if she had the courage to do the right thing.
Could she turn in her own father? Could she mention her suspicions to anyone?
Could she not mention her suspicions?
Could she hold them inside and hope Todd had finished whatever he had set out to do? What if he wasn't finished? Would she really wait until he managed to kill somebody before she would do what was right?
What if her silence killed a child?
"Oh, God," she said out loud.
"Holly! It was a dream." His voice so calm, so certain. It was a voice that a woman wanted to wake up to forever.
That had been the dream. The dream had been the night she just had spent with Blake. A night so full of laughter and passion and wondrous discovery. A night she would never forget, that she would hold to and find strength in the days to come. The weeks. The months. Maybe the years. She could not ask Blake to care about her now, she could not accept his caring.
"Blake," she said, "you have to leave now. I have something I have to do today. It's important."
She was amazed by the coolness in her tone.
Blake looked stunned. Then the hurt chased, like clouds, through the clear gray of his eyes. Somehow that was much easier to handle than the tender concern.
"I think we should talk about that nightmare."
"Maybe later," she said, resisting the note of authority in his voice. "Blake, please just go."
He was not the kind of man who would ever beg, she knew that. He got up and found his clothes. He sat on the edge of the bed and slipped his jeans over his legs, stood up, and tugged them over the steel curve of his buttock. They settled snugly around his waist as he did up the snap.
She watched him with the kind of hunger of a woman who was saving memories. How she wanted this to be part of her life. To be able to watch him throw clothes over his magnificent body every day, feel the wanting start in her anew.
Did women grow tired of these little things, like watching their man get dressed in the morning? Did those small things lose their ability to compel, after time?
She could not imagine such a thing. She could not imagine a day would ever come when she would tire of him. His back was still to her, as he pulled the crumpled shirt over the broad surface of his shoulders.
Shoulders she had touched and kissed and known.
For some reason, she pictured him growing old. She knew who he would be like. Joe Colton. Handsome and proud and full of vitality.
She knew if she followed these thoughts any further she would begin to cry, and that Blake would turn back to her and return to the bed. He would put his arms around her and tuck her head into his shoulder, and he would not rest until she told him.
Her strength was ebbing as she saw him getting ready to leave. If he gave her one last chance, she would probably tell everything.
She saw him turning back toward her, and she flipped over on her side, as if she did not care if he went.
"Holly?"
"Hmm?" she didn't turn back over.
"You want me to call you later?"
"I think it might be better if I called you."
Silence, and then the door whispered open, and she heard his feet pad across her floor, imagined him stopping to put on his boots, glancing back at her bedroom door one last time. And then she heard the outside door open and close quietly.
It sounded terribly final.
And then she began to weep.
But there was no time for weeping. There was a madman out there, and children in danger, and she needed to know what she was going to do about it.
She realized she had no choice. That was why she had not dared to look at the face in her dream until she had found a safe place, a place that had made her more than she ever was before. A woman of courage, who took chances.
She had no choice, but whichever way she turned now her life would be changed forever, tinged with the faint ugliness of a woman who had betrayed her own father.
Or the worse ugliness of a woman who had betrayed the trust of the children in her care. Not to mention the man who had given his heart to her last night.
Sick with grief and trepidation, she went to the phone book and fumbled through it until she found the number she was looking for.
A woman answered the phone.
For some reason she sounded like the woman that Holly might have been this morning if she had not had that dream.
She sounded like a woman who was happy, in love, satiated.
Holly was shocked at herself for drawing that kind of conclusion about a woman she barely knew.
"Libby, it's Holly Lamb. I need to talk to Rafe, if he's there."
He came to the phone. His voice was deep and strong. Reassuring. It was the voice of a man a woman could believe in.
And, Holly hoped, trust her fate to.
"Rafe, it's Holly Lamb. I need to see you," she said. "It's very urgent. No, don't come here." Blake would have too many questions to ask if Rafe showed up at her cabin. "I'll come to you. In an hour? Fine." She wrote down the instructions he gave her to find his home on the reservation, took a deep breath, and wiped the tears from her eyes. She looked like hell, and it just didn't seem to matter at all anymore what she looked like.
The roads, thankfully, were uncrowded, because Holly drove terribly, her mind so racked with confusion.
Rafe answered the door and invited her in. She followed him back to the kitchen, wrapped her hand around the coffee cup he set in front of her.
She could tell, he was taking her measure, and accurately.
She knew why he and Blake were good friends. He was physically big and strong, like Blake, but it was more. Holly could feel the quiet strength running through him.
He didn't push her, just sipped his own coffee and watched her.
"Blake told me you have a primary suspect
in the water poisoning," she finally said. "And that you wouldn't tell him who it was."
She could tell she shocked him. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't this. And her knowledge that the suspect was her father was confirmed by the hood that dropped warily over his eyes.
"Did he send you here to ask me who it was?" he asked, after a moment, "because if I didn't tell him, I won't tell you."
"You don't have to tell me," she said quietly. "I know."
He stared at her, and she could tell again she had taken him by surprise, and that he was not a man used to being surprised.
"You know?" he repeated, quietly.
"I know." She fought to keep the quiver from her voice and succeeded. "I know that my father poisoned the water."
Rafe took a sip of his coffee, eyed her warily.
"So, are you here on his behalf?" He gave away nothing, neither confirming or denying her father was a suspect.
"On behalf of my father?" she asked incredulously. "What age are you from? I am not here because a man sent me here. I am here because I can't live with myself if I don't do something about what I know."
"How long have you thought it was your father?"
"Since this morning," she said, and then gave in to the feeling she could trust him. She told him about the dreams, about finally this morning the monster having a face. She did not mention the reason the monster's face had become clear to her this morning—because Blake was with her.
"Holly, a dream? That's not exactly cold, hard fact. It's hardly admissible in a court of law."
"You know it's him, don't you?" she pressed.
Rafe ran an uneasy hand through his hair.
"What are you going to do about it?" she asked softly. "He's still free."
She saw in his eyes that he had crossed some line and had decided to trust her as much as she was already trusting him.
"We don't have enough evidence to make an arrest. No traces of the substance in his car, no witnesses, no motive."
"You don't have anything."
He sighed. "Except that hunch. The one that's never wrong."
"I think I could get him to confess to me. I could tape it."
Rafe stared at her, and hope leapt in his dark eyes, before he savagely doused it. "No."
"Why not?"
"Look, you've seen too many cop shows. Things go very wrong on operations like that, and that's with trained people doing the dance."
"You're thinking something else," she deduced.
He shot her a look. "Smart girl."
"And?"
"Okay. Blake would kill me. How's that?"
She allowed herself to feel a small thrill of joy that Blake must have confided in his friend that he had feelings for her. Last night hadn't been an impulse on his part, it had been a culmination.
She forced herself not to think that now. She had to stay strong and clear.
She sensed she still did not have the whole story. "There's something else."
Rafe sighed. "A man was sent here from the Environmental Protection Agency. His name was Charlie O'Connell. He died in a single-vehicle car accident. The circumstances are suspicious."
She felt the blood drain from her face. "You think my father killed him?"
He shrugged. "It's a possibility that makes me not very inclined to ask you to get a confession out of him."
Why did she feel so newly shocked? Why was this any worse than what he had already done? The fact that people had not died from the contaminated water seemed to be more by accident than design.
If anything, the suspicion of murder should be hardening her resolve. Her father was a dangerous man. And she might be the only person he would ever admit that to.
She leaned across the table, drilled Rafe with her eyes. "Mr. James, I am getting that confession from my father. On tape. I'm doing it with or without your help. So you decide which it's going to be."
"Look, you're not getting involved in this."
"I'm already involved in this." She stood up. "Fine. I can go buy one of those pocket-size tape recorders and hide it and go see my father. I don't need your help."
He sat there, and she could tell he was debating whether to call her bluff. Only she wasn't bluffing. She took a step toward the door.
"Wait."
She turned back toward him. "Yes?"
Rafe looked at her grimly, and then a reluctant smile played across his firm lips. "No wonder he's crazy about you," he said. "Has he told you that yet?"
"Yes," she said, but she would not let the confusion of that yes weaken her, change her mind, make her thinking less clear. She had to get this out of the way before she could give Blake one more thought.
If she did not look after this, their relationship was doomed.
And maybe it was anyway.
"I'm going to give Rory Sinclair a call and ask him over. I'd like his take on this, his input. Is that all right with you?"
She nodded.
It seemed like only a few minutes before Rory was at the door. Rory had been to the Hopechest office before, and it was just as evident why he and Blake were friends as it was evident why Rafe and Blake were friends.
The three men had something the same about them—that easy self-assurance of men who knew who they were and what they were about. The easy confidence of strong men who had relied on their strength and won because of it.
When Rory joined them at the kitchen table, Rafe encouraged her to tell it again.
She repeated how the dream had revealed the truth to her.
Rory shot Rafe a look that said So what? We can't use it in court.
"Tell him the rest," Rafe said grimly.
"I'm going to tape a confession from my father."
"What?" Rory exploded. "You sure the hell are not."
"Yes, I am."
"She said she's doing it with or without our help," Rafe said.
Rory gave her a stern look. "It's too dangerous. Miss Lamb—Holly—I don't think you know what you're playing with here. You're thinking of him as Daddy, but he has willfully harmed a lot of people." Rory cast Rafe a glance.
"I told her our suspicions about O'Connell."
"So, you know your father may have even killed a man. You don't just go marching into something like that and say fess up, and think he will."
"Give me credit for having a few brains," she said coldly, "and for knowing my father. I believe I know exactly how to play to him."
"I think she can pull it off," Rafe said reluctantly.
Rory rocked his chair up on its back legs and looked from Rafe to her and back again. "I'll call Kane Lummus," he said, and got up and did so. "He's on his way. Blake is going to kill us."
"My thoughts exactly," Rafe said glumly.
"Blake doesn't even have to know about it," she said evenly.
"Right."
"Sure."
"He doesn't!"
"He'll know," Rafe told her sharply.
"How?"
"You don't know Blake like I do. The man runs on instinct. He follows his gut. He'll know something's up and he won't rest until he knows what it is. Especially if it involves you."
It was the second time Rafe had implied Blake had been harboring feelings for her longer than she might have guessed.
Possibly as long as she had been harboring them for him?
All of them froze as they heard the deep rumble of a motorcycle engine outside the house. Rory and Rafe exchanged glances as the engine shut down.
A moment later, Blake was leaning against the kitchen door, his helmet swinging in his hand, his black leather jacket undone. He regarded the three of them solemnly.
"Do you mind telling me what's going on here?"
Fourteen
Nobody looked very happy to see him, Blake noted. And that went double for Holly. She was exchanging looks with his friends that begged them not to tell.
Tell what?
Angry and confused after leaving Holly this morning, he had gone home and don
e the mature thing. The masculine thing. He had sulked and licked his wounds. And sulked some more. Somehow, being asked to leave was not what he had pictured for his first morning as a man in love.
Then he had heard her car start up and gotten to his bedroom window just in time to see her pulling away.
Apparently she wasn't sulking. She was getting on with her important plans, just as she had said she was going to.
He'd decided to get on his motorbike and head for the coast. The truth was it was a variation on sulking where he entertained various notions, including that of never coming back. But he hadn't gone very far before memories of the night before came back to torment him.
Last night had been a night of breathtaking magnificence. It wouldn't be stretching it to say being with Holly was hands down the best experience of his entire life. And he had known it was the same for her, with that wonderful feeling of knowing that came from being with Holly. He knew her. She knew him.
How had it all blown up?
The nightmare. Whatever she had dreamed had gripped her so strong he could not break it. He remembered they had discussed her dream before. A silly dream, the subconscious dealing with all her fears surrounding the ranch's water.
In her dream a monster poisoned the ranch water. But when she had awoken this morning, she seemed to feel the dream had told her something real. Did she think she knew who had poisoned the water?
Maybe she thought it was him.
The thought was so stunning he had to pull off the road to consider it. The very thought was an affront to his ego, and everything he had come to hope he stood for: decency, integrity, honesty. It seemed impossible the woman he loved could harbor such a notion about him and yet what else could explain that quick turnaround? Holly had gone, it seemed, from loving him madly and completely to not being able to get rid of him fast enough.
Did Holly think he'd poisoned the water? Could he give his love to a woman who could believe such a despicable thing of him?
Well, why not him? He came from a bad gene pool. Good old Dad had managed to wreck Joe Colton's birthday party with a gun. And maybe Blake wasn't so far removed from his own bad-boy days to have truly outrun the stigma.
