by Dee Tenorio
She took a long time to answer. “Why won’t you just give up on me?”
“Why do you keep telling me I should?” Though if she said he was better than her, he was going to get pissed.
She didn’t, but her answer pissed him off anyway.
“Because I’m ruined.” Mournful. Like it was the truth.
He released his hold only to stroke her cheek. “Not ruined. Scarred, maybe, but I have my scars too. Deep ones I earned to survive, to keep my family together. A woman who’s never known pain or loss would never be able to understand me. Never be able to take the man I’ve become.” And he would never understand her either. It’d be a hellish, useless life.
“I have secrets,” she added, a huge streak of guilt turning her cheeks red. Why did she somehow believe she could still talk him out of wanting her? “Secrets you might consider lies.” And she knew how much he hated lies.
“Keep them.” He could wait, so long as she stayed. “Share them with me when I’ve earned them. I swear to you, though, when you do, I won’t let you regret it. I will never break your trust.”
“You shouldn’t have to earn anything from me.” But there was a trace of capitulation in her tone. It took all his control not to pounce.
“You’re worth it.” A simple fact.
She stared at him, weighing her decision. Measuring his worth. Or maybe…how far she was willing to believe in him. He stared back, determined not to be less than she needed.
“His name is Malcolm Hall,” she began, the name alone turning the corners of her mouth white. “The last time I saw him, he was killing me.”
Chapter Six
The memory threatened to smother her, as it always did when she was fool enough to let it come to mind. In the dark, when the shadows grew too long or the night too quiet, she couldn’t help but relive the feel of those hard fingers squeezing the air from her throat. The hot, desperate pressure in her face, at the back of her head, her own hands clawing desperately for anything to stop him. Finding nothing…
Locke’s head came down, nuzzling her cheek with the rough bristles on his chin. “You’re not there anymore, Susie. You’re here with me.”
She stuttered in a rush of air, the gravel of his voice soothing somehow. Actually, everything about Locke was soothing, which had to be the last word anyone else would use about him. Big, booming voice. Hard-packed muscle all over every inch of him. A temper that could blow the rafters off a barn if he ever cut it loose. He should have been everything she feared, but instead he was a solid anchor she could hang on to. That she could feel safe with. Just this once, she gave herself permission to lean into him, to be grateful for his strength. To need him and accept what he was offering.
She pushed out a breath. Locke’s support or not, this would not be easy.
“I was twenty-two when I met him. I was serving at a fundraiser, he was there with his parents. He was charming and he wanted my number. I thought he was just another upper-crust frat boy wanting to go slumming so I said no. I wish to God I’d stuck with that. But he was determined, and next thing I know, his parents are hiring my boss for event after event, with the stipulation that I work the parties. He was there every time, talking to me, charming me, flirting. He seemed so nice, and all he wanted was a chance to take me to dinner. I gave in. I really thought he’d give up once he had what he wanted, but he had made up his mind about me. I didn’t realize that at the time, of course. I just bought in to the fantasy that Prince Charming had fallen madly in love with me, and I was the luckiest girl in the world.
“For a while, that’s exactly what it was. We got married, and since we were both only children, we had dreams of starting a big family right away. Sometimes, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t lost the first baby…”
The doctor told them it happened now and then, that something just didn’t go right. They were young, they could try again. And they did. But nothing was ever the same after that.
“He looked at me different. He blamed me. Even though the doctor said it could have been a million things we had no control over. That was when the arguing started. I thought we should wait a while, but Malcolm wanted to try again right away. He wouldn’t hear of anything else.
“He still apologized back then, for hurting my feelings. For pushing when I wasn’t ready. The things he said, the rages he had. He’d throw furniture, break glasses, smash whatever was nearby. I thought it was the way he dealt with the hurt. I didn’t realize having an heir had become an obsession for him. Malcolm didn’t understand that sometimes you don’t get what you want. He’d never experienced anything his parents couldn’t fix for him. If he wanted it, he got it. If you got in his way… Well, you regretted it.”
Locke hugged her closer, his comfort a balm to the painful memories.
“I lost the second baby almost before I knew I was pregnant. That was when he started to hate me, I think. As if I were doing it to spite him. He was so angry all the time. So cold. Barely spoke to me, and when he did, I knew it was taking all his control not to wrap his hands around my neck. I figured that was why he never touched me, except for the nights he came to my bed.”
Those had been the worst part. Taking something that had once been about love and passion and turning it into a mechanical act. Twisting it into something angry, something punishing. After a while he hadn’t cared if he hurt her. If she begged him to stop. Until she’d stopped begging. Stopped crying. Stopped being there while her body turned into something almost separate from her mind…
“I never understood why he didn’t divorce me. Why he didn’t give up and find a woman who could give him the children he wanted. I tried to leave. I didn’t have a lot of friends to call, not anymore. By then Malcolm had shifted my entire world. I spoke only to his friends, his circle, his family. And none of them would do anything for me without checking with him first. I hadn’t even realized how isolated I was until I had nowhere to go. But one of my old girlfriends from the hospitality crew I’d worked took me in.”
She closed her eyes against the regrets, but they only magnified.
“I was only there a few hours when he came.” She would never forget, ever, the moment when Andrea opened the front door. The sickening sound of bone snapping as he punched her without a word. She fell, and Malcolm had come in, his face as emotionless and blank as if none of it mattered to him, then he knelt and hit her, over and over and over. “What happened to her was my fault. I’d brought him to her door.”
“No.” A gruff command she felt through the wall of his chest against hers.
“You don’t know what he did, Locke.”
“I don’t have to know. You didn’t make that bastard do anything. He made his own choices.”
She shook her head. Rationally, she understood that fact, but nothing would absolve her of what had happened. “He broke her jaw, her cheekbone. Probably half her teeth, I don’t know. Her face looked like hamburger when he finally stopped. I don’t remember screaming, but I guess I was because he shook me and slapped me so hard I lost a tooth of my own.” It was the first time he’d ever openly hit her. And only the beginning, though she hadn’t realized that at the time. Couldn’t have imagined what would come. “He left his chauffeur there, to take her to the hospital and I guess to keep her quiet. I just know I never saw her again.
“That was the truly frightening part. Nothing happened. Malcolm went on with his days as he would have on any other week. No police came. No one from Andrea’s family. It was like nothing had happened, except between us.
“After that, Malcolm didn’t hold back. I lived every day, waiting for the next time I’d do something wrong.” She never had to wait long, either. Sometimes she wondered if he would make up things, just for the pleasure of hurting her. “He used to tell me I was being difficult. That I only had myself to blame.”
So often she had almost believed it. But then she’d see the sadism in his eyes and she knew it had nothing to do with what she’d done
that day or even the day before. Still, she tried to appease him. Every day, hating herself more and more for it.
“Like the email,” Locke rumbled, his tone flatter than she’d ever heard it.
She nodded, just the thought of that thing sending a shiver through her again. She’d almost thrown up when she’d seen that stationery, those words. Like a hand had reached from the past to slap her. Choke her.
“None of the others were officially from his father’s firm before. Just the lawyer’s name. I should have checked into him. Should have…I don’t know. Something. Because I knew, as soon as I read that line, it was him. He may not know it’s me he’s trying to intimidate, but he knows it’s me in that catalog. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants. If he can’t get to me through letters, he’ll come, just like it said he would. Even if he has to do it himself.”
“Why? You obviously won’t be forgiving him or taking him back.”
“Oh, he doesn’t want my forgiveness.” Bitterness mixed with her fear in a stomach-turning stew. “And he definitely doesn’t want me anymore, not like that. He hates me now, probably more than before, since I left him. The way he sees it, I’m the one who hurt him. He just wanted a baby. And that was the one thing I couldn’t give. “
Or was it wouldn’t? She wasn’t sure anymore. Malcolm had been so sure she was doing something to thwart him. She hadn’t, of course. She’d wanted each and every one of those babies. Had lost part of her soul along with them. But even then, she’d wondered if she was doing the right thing bringing a child so close to a man like her husband. If he could intimidate her so easily, what would he do to a baby? To a child depending on her to keep it safe. The doubts ate at her like acid, the poison of them destroying any chance she had of carrying to term. Or anywhere close…
“How many did you lose?”
The smile that pulled at her lips had no humor, just a touch of bittersweet because the man holding her was finally seeing how damaged she was. He spoke softer, huskier than she’d ever heard him before. Trying so hard to be gentle. Was it any wonder he’d managed to make her love him?
But did she dare share that with him, knowing she didn’t have enough to satisfy him? Or just let him understand why?
“Five. Not one of them made it past ten weeks. Something always went wrong. It was after the last one that the doctor said no more. I’d never have children. Too much damage inside. The scar tissue had blocked my Fallopian tubes, he said. They were essentially tied.”
Essentially. Funny how a word could be so all-encompassing that one man could consider it a reason to kill her…but leave enough room for another to change her world completely.
“I still didn’t see it coming, if you can believe it. He was so calm, so I was afraid, but I never thought he’d go so far.” The attack had been sudden. One second she’d been getting ready for the dinner with his parents, the next she was on the floor, curled up as he kicked her. There was no defense against his rage, no place she could hide. When he’d finally straddled her body, sweat dripping from his face onto hers, his inky hair falling wildly so that he looked nothing like the man she once knew, she was almost relieved to feel the darkness coming.
“They told me one of the maids heard the commotion. When she found him choking me, she hit him over the head with a poker from the fireplace. I woke up in the hospital, with my father-in-law at my bedside.
“He gave me a choice. I could go along with the story that we’d survived a home invasion and he would ensure I would be granted a quiet divorce with a new life, far away from his son. Or I could press charges and face the full brunt of his legal team. They would take apart every moment of my life, discredit me in public and when all was said and done, no one would interfere when Malcolm came to finish the job.”
“You took the deal,” Locke murmured.
“I took the deal.” Without regret. Without remorse, either. Yes, she felt like a coward. Like she’d done something horribly wrong in keeping silent, but at the time, there had been no other choice. She’d had nothing left to her but a will to survive, even if she had no idea why she wanted to. “I stayed long enough to sign the paperwork on an uncontested divorce. I don’t know what that man had to do to make it happen so smoothly or so fast, what lies he told or how he kept Malcolm in check, but by the time I was healed, it was over. I was free.”
She’d gotten in her truck, the one she’d bought on her own, from a man who had no qualms about keeping her name off the pink slip, and started to drive. It took two years, three months and seven states before she’d found the will to consider the rest of her life. To rebuild herself along with her future. Then, all it had taken was a map and a touch of fate to bring her here, to Rancho del Cielo.
To Locke.
She took another breath, surrounded by his scent and warmth and wondered—not for the first time—how she had ended up here. How had she come to this blessing when she’d done nothing but make mistake after mistake. How long it would take before she ruined this too?
Unconsciously, she slid her hand down to her belly, where their baby rested. Her miracle, one she deserved even less than she did its father. One she couldn’t risk to Malcolm.
To her surprise, Locke’s hand was already there.
She stilled, though his hold was as gentle as before. Only now, he cupped her protectively. Intently. Telling her without words, as he did so many other things. She couldn’t help it, her throat suddenly so tight she almost couldn’t breathe.
He can’t know. He can’t…
But, he was Locke after all. He might let her have her way most of the time, but he never let her have her illusions.
“You’ll be through the first trimester in a few days, won’t you?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Don’t.” The wet plea for understanding in her voice would absolutely kill him if he let her go on. “I understand why you didn’t.”
Last night, he couldn’t have imagined a reason, but after finally hearing some of what she’d been through…
Her arms snaked around his neck, squeezing him as if she couldn’t get close enough. As if she wanted to open his chest and hide inside. “Then you understand why I have to go. I can’t let him destroy this baby too. I can’t lose it, Locke. I can’t—”
“No.” Every fiber of his being clenched in repudiation. “We’ll do everything needed to keep the baby safe, I promise you that, but running isn’t the answer this time. Not when I’m here to help you.”
She didn’t let go, or push out of his arms, which would have absolutely shredded him, but she didn’t say anything either.
Silence and Susie was always something to worry about.
“You could come with me.”
Ahhh, baby… Her voice was too small, almost hopeless, while her nails dug into his shoulders through his shirt. He went back to smoothing his hands over her back, hoping to soothe her again, even as he turned her down. “I’d follow you to the end of the earth, but we both know I’d just drag your ass back here as soon as I found you.”
Her choked laughter was the best sound in the world.
It really was a shame he was going to have to sober her up again.
“Rancho del Cielo is our home. It’s where we planted our roots. We belong here.”
She shook her head, her silky curls brushing his face. “I never put down roots. I knew he’d find me some day. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to go.”
“And you say my bullshit is adorable. Woman, I don’t think you can go ten minutes without calling Amanda when she doesn’t come in and God knows you’re addicted to talking for an hour and a half to every person who walks in the store, which is why so many people keep coming every day. To say nothing of the people in this town who will track me down with pitchforks and torches, blaming me if you actually manage to get very far.”
“That’s just good customer service at work.” She sighed when he snorted at her blatant lie. “I said it was charming, by t
he way. No one in their right mind would use your name and adorable in the same sentence.”
“I don’t know. I bet in a few months all kinds of people will tell you I make adorable babies.”
Just like that, the playfulness left her. “Don’t joke, Locke. Not about that.”
Her wounds were too raw, he knew, but he also knew that if she didn’t loosen her grip on them, they’d never heal.
“Who’s joking? My brothers and sister might be pains in the asses, but they were cute little monsters from the moment they were born. Even the elder twins, if you can believe it. I almost felt bad about trying to pawn them off on strangers whenever my parents weren’t looking.”
She leaned back in his hold, her jaw set in that determined-to-be-heard position he was so familiar with. “Locke, you have to understand. There’s a very real chance this baby won’t make it to term. I hate it, but you can’t go walking around in a fantasyland. Just because we managed to get pregnant, doesn’t mean we’re safe. So many things could go wr—”
He leaned in and stole the words off her lips with a fast, hard kiss. Her lips were still pursed when pulled back.
“Do you know how I managed it, taking on six kids when I was pretty much a kid myself? A grieving one, at that? How I kept it together when everyone was telling me that I should cut and run?”
She shook her head, for once quietly waiting for an answer. Or maybe a reason to stay.
“Hope.”
She made a disgusted expression, and if her legs were free, he’d have bet that she would have kicked him. “For a second there, I was really thinking you had an answer I could do something with.”
“I do,” he replied as solemnly as he knew how. “I didn’t have a damn thing else. Every week, every month, all I could do was pray to God that we’d make it. That we’d keep the house. That no one would intervene. That the kids wouldn’t get into more trouble. That the bills would get paid. I won’t lie and tell you it always happened. But we pulled through. We held on to hope and we made it.”
