Cole’s hand shot out and stopped the door from being shut in his face. “Then tell her to damn well un-retire. I’m coming in … get out of the way.” When the butler seemed to hesitate, Cole barked, “Now!”
Patrick’s throat worked as he obviously debated whether he should suffer what was sure to be his employer’s wrath or a sound beating from Cole. Choosing his physical well-being over his employment, Patrick backed up and allowed Cole to step inside. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”
Cole stood in the giant foyer and watched Patrick run up the winding stairway. The man was halfway up when Elizabeth’s voice snapped, “Who is it, Patrick?”
“Cole Mathison, ma’am.”
“Oh, tell him I’ll be right down.”
Cole wasn’t surprised to hear delight, almost genuine warmth, in her voice. The woman had made it clear more than once she’d like to get to know him a hell of a lot better.
Patrick returned and stopped at the bottom step. With his usual imperious nod, he announced, “Mrs. Fairchild will be glad to receive you in the sitting room.”
Any other time, he might have laughed at the ridiculously formal statement. His laughing days were behind him.
Cole followed Patrick to the sitting room. Standing beside the sofa, he waited for Elizabeth to come through the door. Ten minutes later, he was still waiting. Was she doing this on purpose? If so, he had no real issues with dragging her downstairs. Just when he thought he might have to do exactly that, the door opened.
She glided toward him, her hand out in welcome. “Cole, how wonderful to see you again.”
Cole ignored her hand. “I’m leaving town. I won’t be back. There’re some things you need to hear and it’s about damn time someone said them to you.”
Shock replaced the smile she’d greeted him with. “I beg your pardon?”
“You will stop your harassment of Keeley. Do you hear me?”
“How dare you! Get out of my—”
“I’ll get out when I’ve had my say. You’ve had fun these last few years torturing a woman whose only sin was to be the daughter of the woman your husband was obviously in love with.”
“That’s a lie.”
Cole glowered at the woman who’d caused Keeley so much misery. For days he’d been mulling in his mind some theories, and had come to some interesting, albeit outrageous, conclusions. He’d only recently started listening to his gut again, and despite the lack of evidence to back up his suspicions, he was certain he was on the right path. “I know you’re the one who arranged for your son’s kidnapping.”
Before the expected self-righteous indignation took over, he saw a flicker of fear. “You’re insane. Why on earth would I have my own son kidnapped?”
“You tell me.” He cocked his head and went with his instincts. “You’ve hated Keeley and her mother for years. Stephen had to know this. I’m thinking part of his marriage to Keeley was to spite you.”
She wrapped her thin arms around herself. “Stephen was a rebellious young man with a skewed sense of humor. He knew I wouldn’t approve.”
“So you did your best to make Keeley’s life miserable by turning the town against her. And then, when she was publicly humiliated about his affairs, you decided this was a perfect opportunity to teach him a lesson. Having him abducted would scare the hell out of him, and Keeley would be considered the prime suspect. Only it didn’t work out the way you planned, did it?”
She glared at him. “You can’t prove any of this.”
“A new diary has been found in Rosemount’s belongings … evidence points straight to you.”
Shock replaced the haughtiness. “That can’t be true … I went through a—”
Triumph filled him. Lying had never felt so good. “You went through what? A broker? Yeah, the broker told Rosemount. He recorded it in his journal.”
Recovering quickly, she straightened her shoulders. “My word—the word of a Fairchild—will be believed over any hoodlum who claims I had anything to do with Stephen’s abduction. And I’ll have you up on defamation charges if you even—”
She stopped on a gasp as he loomed over her. There were certain things he could prove. “The ransom was one million dollars. Rosemount took forty percent; the person who hired him took sixty. A week after Stephen’s body was found, you made sizable donations to ten different charities.”
Her thin lips tightened. “And that proves I had my own son kidnapped?”
“You’re not a generous woman, Elizabeth. That’s the first charitable contribution you’ve ever made. Did donating the money clear your conscience for getting your son killed?”
Her face went white. “I had nothing to do with my son’s death.”
“You had him kidnapped.”
“They said they wouldn’t hurt him. He wasn’t supposed to—” She broke off, apparently realizing she’d said too much. Her face stiffened into a cold mask. At last she looked like the embittered middle-aged woman she was. “You can’t prove anything.”
“I don’t have to. What I can do is put a bug in the ear of the FBI. They’ll crawl up your ass six ways to Sunday until you won’t know which end is up.”
She shook her head. “They weren’t able to uncover who was responsible when it happened. Nothing’s changed.”
“Keeley didn’t have me then … she does now.” He leaned over her and growled, “You’ve got a choice. Not only will you stop vilifying her to the entire town, you’ll stop trying to contest her husband’s will, the sheriff’s office will stop their harassment, and oh yeah, you will stop those emails that begin with ‘Bad Mama Bitch.’”
Shock widened her eyes. “How did you …?”
He hadn’t … until now. Now that he knew everything, this woman would rue the day if she ever said anything against Keeley again.
“Leave Keeley alone or suffer the consequences. Your choice.”
“Are you threatening me? I’ll have you arrested.”
“Threats have no backbone … this is a warning. The only one you’ll get. If you don’t comply, this town will turn against you so fast, you’ll have to move out of the state. I’ll contact every newspaper in the South and feed them information about Elizabeth Fairchild that’ll make your hair stand on end. The famous Fairchild name will be made a laughingstock. All because of you.”
“I’ll sue you for slander.”
“Go ahead, I’ve got nothing to lose. You don’t stop, it’ll be like shit on a skunk. No one will be able to determine what stinks more, you or the Fairchild name.”
“You disgusting, vile man.”
“You’ve not seen disgusting yet.” He leaned even closer; within inches of her pale face, he snarled, “Stop. The. Harassment. Now.”
Elizabeth’s mouth twisted and pursed as she tried to come up with another threat. He didn’t give her time. Satisfied he’d made his position clear, Cole turned and stalked out the door.
Keeley stared blindly out her bedroom window, every particle of her body hurting, especially her heart. She had told him to leave … and he had left. And now she felt so incredibly empty. Hollowed out and alone.
She heard the door open and turned to see Shea stride into the middle of the room, her expression an odd mixture of compassion, anger, and determination.
“He left,” Keeley whispered. Why she said it, she didn’t know. And didn’t know what she expected Shea to say, to do. It just hurt so damn much.
“I know,” Shea said.
Leaning back against the window, she faced Shea with her hurt. “I trusted him.”
“He made a mistake by not telling you. You deserved to know.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I’ll let you wallow in your anger and self-righteous pride in a few minutes, if that’s what you really want. But before you do, I think you need all the facts. Then you can decide who should be apologizing to whom.”
Keeley straightened her spine. She had known there was more. Cole had given her the briefest, barest facts. He had
n’t tried to sugarcoat anything but she knew he’d been through hell. She’d come this far in learning, she’d damn well hear it all.
“Tell me.”
“Not to be too melodramatic and quote movie lines, but are you sure you can handle the truth?”
“I’ve survived a hell of a lot over the last few years. I’ll survive this.”
Her eyes narrowing slightly, Shea tilted her head. “You’ve had it bad, Keeley. There’s no denying that. A lot of the things that have happened to you aren’t fair or right, but that’s the way life is sometimes and you deal with it.”
A dry, humorless laugh burst from Keeley’s mouth. “Deal with it? That’s your best advice?”
“You think you’re the only one life has screwed over in some way?”
“Of course not.”
“Here’s what I see: a girl who lost her mother too soon, the most important person in the world to her. Then the girl, still grieving, fell for a charming smile and a slick line. A man you might not have paid attention to if you weren’t so vulnerable. He cheated on you, humiliated you. Damaged your trust and your heart … then he died.
“What happened next is probably the most horrific thing a person can know … your children are taken and it seems like all is lost. But then, like out of a Hollywood movie, a mysterious stranger comes to help. Bigger than life, movie-star handsome, heroic, brave, and kind. Everything a woman might fantasize for her dream man. He matches your determination and drive to save your children. It appears he can do no wrong. He treats you with respect and tenderness. He’s your hero and you fall in love with him.”
Keeley swallowed. She wanted to deny Shea’s words, but she couldn’t. Every one of them was true. Cole had seemed so incredibly perfect.
“And today, you find out your perfect man is not so perfect after all. He’s human. Those fantasies you cooked up about him aren’t all true. You find out he’s flawed.”
“I wasn’t looking for a perfect man. But we were as close as two people could be, and he still didn’t tell me. I was married to a liar … I can’t be with another one.”
Shea’s brows arched and a cold light entered her eyes. She spoke softly, but Keeley heard the fury. “You’re comparing Cole to your sleaze of a husband?”
Tears she’d been fighting for hours overflowed. No, God, no. Cole Mathison and Stephen had nothing in common. Nothing!
Pushing away from the window, Keeley straightened her shaky legs and walked to the middle of the room. Holding her hand out to Shea, she said softly, “I need to know everything…. Help me understand him.”
Her smile incredibly lovely, Shea took her hand and they sat together on the couch.
Ethan appeared at the door. “Everything okay?”
“We’re just having a little heart-to-heart,” Shea said. “I’ll be fine.”
Ethan nodded but didn’t move away from the door. His expression was one of concern and protection; he knew his wife was upset and was determined to be close if she needed him.
Keeley was beginning to realize the men of LCR were very protective of their loved ones. As Cole had been with her.
“Tell me,” Keeley said.
“We were on an op together … Ethan, Cole, and me … and some other operatives. Ethan was running the op. We’d set up what we thought was a good sting to bring Rosemount in. Only he somehow found out about it.” She took a breath and asked, “Did you know that Cole and I were married at one time?”
“Yes, he told me that.”
“We had just signed the annulment papers right before we went on the op. I think we were all emotionally ravaged at the time … Cole and I shouldn’t have gone.” Shea shuddered another breath and Ethan was by her side in an instant, his hand on her shoulder.
Shea smiled up at her husband, but when she turned back to Keeley, her eyes swam with tears. “It was my idea to go…. Cole didn’t want to, but I talked him into it.”
“What happened?”
“Cole and Ethan had an argument…. Cole walked out, saw something he thought he could handle by himself, and went inside a warehouse … the building blew up. We thought he died.”
“But instead he was captured?”
“Yes … for a year he was tortured and drugged.”
Keeley swallowed and closed her eyes. She’d seen the scars. That wasn’t something Shea needed to tell her. “I’ve seen his back.”
“Do you know why he has the scars on his back?”
“He told me he was beaten.”
“They missed giving him the drug for one day, and he was able have some kind of cognitive thought. He was ordered to break a woman’s neck … he refused. He was beaten and then whipped.”
“Oh dear God,” Keeley whispered.
“He was Rosemount’s puppet … his killing machine. He murdered on command because he didn’t know anything other than what Rosemount put in his head. But that one time, when he had a moment of clarity, he knew it was wrong. He refused and was tortured.”
As if Shea no longer saw Keeley, her eyes glazed over and she spoke in a dull monotone, “He almost died. They started drugging him again. He had no conscious thought, no will …” She took a long, sobbing breath. “He lost all memory of who he was, what he was. I went after Rosemount … wanted to make him pay. I ended up getting captured, too. I was given the same drug as Cole. He watched while Rosemount abused me, tortured me, and he did nothing to stop it.”
Tears rolled down Shea’s face as she refocused her gaze on Keeley. “Knowing the kind of man Cole is, how protective he is … can you imagine what that did to him when he realized he’d watched my torture and hadn’t tried to save me?”
As if unable to watch his wife share her story without holding her, Ethan sat beside Shea and wrapped his arms around her.
Shea nestled into her husband’s arms as she continued, “After he was rescued, came off the drugs, he woke up to a living nightmare. Had to relive losing his wife and daughter all over again. He remembered the bad things first … that’s how the drug works. The good things either never come back or are sketchy. All of this might have destroyed a lesser man. Cole took it on all over again, because there was one thing he couldn’t let go of, couldn’t stop thinking about. Do you know what tortured him the most?”
Frozen, unable to speak for the mounting sorrow building inside her, Keeley could only shake her head.
“The knowledge that he’d killed an innocent man. It happened after the very first drugging. The dosage was wrong … the pain almost killed him. He was crazy with it … didn’t know what he was doing.”
Barely able to whisper, Keeley said, “He told me.”
What Cole had been forced to do, what had been done to him, was tragic and horrendous. Keeley couldn’t blame him for Stephen’s death. It hadn’t been his fault.
“When he was well enough, he came to check on you,” Shea said.
Keeley shook her head. “I never met him before—”
“He did it from a distance … he was worried for you, for your children. He couldn’t let go of the fact that he’d killed your husband and felt as if he needed to take on the responsibility of seeing to your safety.”
“How did he do that?”
“He kept an eye on you for days, trying to determine if there was a threat. You seemed to be getting your life back together. He could detect no danger.”
“Why didn’t he tell me any of this?”
“He didn’t want to hurt you … bring you more pain. Getting your children back for you was his only priority.”
“He should have been the one to tell me everything.”
Shea nodded. “You’re right, he should have. But Cole is human, just like the rest of us. He screwed up. Couldn’t figure out how to tell the woman he was falling in love with that he’d been her husband’s killer.” Her green-eyed gaze direct and challenging, she said, “The question is, are you going to let that one mistake destroy everything? Because, if you are, then you don’t deserve him.”
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Keeley hurriedly stuffed clothes into a small duffel bag. Of all the mistakes she’d made in her life, and she had made plenty, telling Cole to leave had been the worst.
Everything Shea said was true. She had imparted Cole with perfection, and when he’d ended up having flaws, she’d turned on him. If there was anyone who should be apologizing, it was herself.
Years ago, she’d dreamed about a man of integrity and courage coming into her life. Her mother had told her about her father, about what a wonderful, strong man he’d been. Keeley had dreamed about finding a man like that. Instead she’d settled for a shallow, handsome man with a charming smile.
The reasons Stephen had married her no longer mattered. Whether he’d done it to spite his mother; whether he’d actually loved Keeley at all. It was all in the past. Stephen was gone and her only goals were to have both her children back with her … and to go after the man she loved.
Cole was the man of integrity and character she’d longed for, and what had she done? She’d accused him of making love to her out of pity. Told him to leave.
Her mind went back to all those beautiful moments they’d shared. How he’d made love to her with such tender ferocity. Her fantasies hadn’t come close to the reality of how Cole made her feel, what his lovemaking had done for her … not just the pleasure, which was immense, but also the confidence she’d gained.
She had wanted perfection and now with her eyes wide open, Keeley realized how very imperfect she herself was. She had wanted a hero … a white knight … a savior. What had she gotten? A flawed, imperfect man who was good and decent and had done everything within his power to help her. Had sacrificed himself time and again to make up for something that hadn’t been his fault in the first place. Every time she’d turned around, Cole had been doing things for her. What had she done for him? Nothing.
Would he forgive her?
She loved him. He hadn’t told how he felt with words, but his action had been full of love.
It wouldn’t be easy … nothing worthwhile ever was, but if she could convince him of her love and sincerity, would he give her a second chance to make it right? To be worthy of his love?
Last Chance 05 - Second Chance Page 29
