by Ciana Stone
“It’s not your fault, Lil,” he responded, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Clint, if anything happens to Cam…”
“He’s going to be fine.”
She could tell his words were of hope and not certainty. He was as scared as she that someone was going to walk in and tell them Cam hadn’t made it. She didn’t know if she could face that and if she couldn’t, what in the world would it do to Clint?
Nausea bubbled in her stomach. She leaned back in her seat, gripping Clint’s hand and praying. Two hours that felt like an eternity passed before she heard a man’s voice calling Clint’s name.
Clint jumped up as a doctor approached. “The surgery went well,” the doctor said. “The bullet passed through, but nicked an artery. We’ve repaired the damage and he will be fine.”
“Oh thank god,” Lily breathed.
“Thank you.” Clint shook the doctor’s hand. “When can we see him?”
“One of you can come back now to recovery. But only for a few minutes. He’s just starting to come around.”
“Go,” Lily encouraged Clint when he looked at her.
He nodded, gave her a kiss on the cheek and followed the doctor. Lily watched as they passed through the double doors leading from the waiting room. Cam was going to be okay.
For now.
She tried to ignore the voice in her head reminding her that he wouldn’t have been shot in the first place if not for her. That Johnny B was still out there, with more goons, and that he probably wouldn’t stop until he either got what he wanted or got revenge.
In short, as long as she was around, Clint and Cam were still in danger.
That realization hit her with a near physical blow. She turned and ran from the emergency room and climbed into Clint’s truck. As much as she wanted otherwise, she had to leave. She couldn’t put Clint or Cam through more, couldn’t put them in more danger.
She drove back to the ranch, threw clothes into her duffel bag and grabbed the wad of cash she kept stashed in her underwear drawer. Despite all protestations, Clint had paid her every week for working on the ranch. She had enough to rent a car or get a flight.
To where, she didn’t know. All she did know was that it was time to say goodbye to any hopes of a future with Clint.
* * * * *
“Lily!”
Clint kicked the door closed behind him and hurried through the house, calling her name. Where the hell was she? When he’d returned to the waiting room after seeing Cam, Lily was gone.
His truck was missing from the parking lot and she was not answering her cell phone, so he called a cab.
Now his truck was sitting in the drive and there was no sign of Lily. He went into the bedroom and stopped cold. Dresser drawers stood open, the normally tidy stacks of clothes within them jumbled.
He noticed the closet door standing open and went to it. Her duffel bag no longer lay on the top shelf. Clint turned, looking blankly around the room. His eyes fell on the nightstand. Propped against the lamp was a folded sheet of paper bearing his name.
He hurried to pick it up, unfolded and read.
I can’t keep bringing trouble to your life. It’s my fault Cam got shot, and it will be my fault if Johnny B sends more of his goons. I can’t do that to you. I love you, Clint, and I’m sorry. Lily.
Suddenly Clint’s knees went weak and he sat down hard on the bed. He stared at the note, read it again. She was gone. Lily had left him.
* * * * *
Lily stopped and stared at what had once been her home. Now it was little more than a charred pile of rubble. She turned off the engine of the rental car and climbed out. The silence hit her. Where was the chirps and trills of the birds, or the agitated chatter of the squirrels? It was like all life had left this place.
The enormity of it hit her like a physical blow. How could she have destroyed something that was once so vital, alive and beautiful? How could she have let her anger drive her to something like this?
The shame of it made her feel sick. Sure, she could blame Eddie. He’d lost the farm to Johnny B, but he hadn’t set the fire. Maybe if she’d tried harder, she could have found a way to save it.
Maybe if she’d tried harder, she wouldn’t have ended up in Florida with Clint and his brother Cam wouldn’t be lying in a hospital recovering from a gunshot. Maybe she wouldn’t now be feeling that there wasn’t much point to her life.
She’d fallen in love when she was a teenager and had lost that love. And when life gave her a second chance at it, she’d screwed it up. Her trouble had followed her and put the people she loved in danger.
What the hell kind of woman was she? And what would her parents think if they could see her now?
Thoughts of her parents brought another flood of tears. She wandered through the rubble of what had once been her home. There was nothing left but a few of the floorboards and those were charred and warped.
The toe of her boot caught on something and she looked down. The ring for the cellar door, what was once called a root cellar. Her mother used to store the vegetables she canned in the root cellar.
Would any of that have survived the fire?
Suddenly it was the most important thing in the world to find out. Lily shoved and tugged, pushed and pulled the debris away from the door. She pulled it open and looked down into the darkness. Shame she didn’t have a flashlight.
No, wait. She did. In her duffel bag. She hurried to the car for the flashlight then returned to the door of the cellar. She climbed down, coughing at the dust and ash that rose when she jumped the last couple of feet to the dirt floor.
Lily shone the flashlight around the small space. Memories came back with sweet sadness as she looked around, for a moment seeing it as it had been when she was a child.
Gone now were the neat rows of jars, organized by contents. Now empty broken jars coated with webs and dirt lay scattered over the hand-built shelves and littered the ground.
Like the rest of her life, it was all destroyed. There was nothing left. She turned to leave and as she did, the beam from the flashlight passed over something jutting up from the dirt floor.
She dropped down on her knees and dug. When she finally uncovered the small metal box, emotion welled up so strong inside her that tears started to stream down her face.
It was her dad’s coin collection.
He’d saved old coins her whole life. She could remember how excited he’d be when he’d come home from the road with a new “find”. She never really understood how he could be so excited about an old penny or nickel but she’d never told him that. She’d just smile and listen, then watch as he’d deposit his new treasure with the others.
“One day this penny might just make us rich, Lily girl,” he’d say.
That had not happened. Not that it had mattered. He’d given her what was more important than things. He’d given her love.
But to now have these coins meant more to her than anything ever could. She hadn’t lost everything. She had a piece of her dad. Clutching the box, she climbed back up the ladder, took one final look around then returned to the rental car.
She had enough money to keep the car for two more days, and stay in the cheap motel another day. That meant she had forty-eight hours to find a job and a place to live.
Fat chance.
What the hell was she going to do? She looked at the coin box lying on the seat beside her.
One day this penny might just make us rich, Lily girl.
The idea of selling her dad’s coins made her want to cry. But she’d heard him talk about people getting as much as a thousand dollars for a coin. If she could get a thousand dollars out of the whole lot, it would buy her time to find a job. And right now life was all about just surviving.
She pulled out her cell phone and ran a search. There were three rare coin dealers in Charlotte. She didn’t know if the coins in the box would be considered rare, but i
t was a good a place as any to start.
Chapter Nine
Clint kicked off his boots, went into the kitchen for a beer and then walked out on the patio and took a seat by the pool. He pulled out his phone. No messages and no calls.
He’d called Lily a hundred times the last three weeks and had sent twice that many texts and still no response. Where the hell was she? And why wasn’t she answering?
He was sick with worry. Worry that Johnny B had found her. Worry that she was somewhere alone and broke with no one to turn to. Most of all, he was sick at the thought that she felt she had to leave.
Cam had tried to make him listen to reason. “Put yourself in her shoes, bro. If it was you, would you have done any different? She thought she was protecting us. You know Lily. She couldn’t live with the idea that she was putting either of us in danger.”
Maybe Cam was right, but that didn’t change the fact that it had ripped his heart out when she left. He’d hired a private detective to try to find her but so far the guy hadn’t turned up anything.
Clint leaned back and closed his eyes. A month ago the future had looked so good. He’d been able to envision a life like he’d dreamed of. A wife and kids, a ranch that was starting to thrive.
Now that all seemed like a fairy tale. Now there was only work and nights filled with loneliness.
He heard a vehicle in the driveway. Cam must be back from the store. They were pretty much out of everything and Cam was tired of takeout food so he’d gone for supplies.
Clint tilted up his beer for a long drink then closed his eyes again. His phone chimed to indicate an incoming text. He pulled it out and looked at it.
Can we talk?
It was Lily!
Where are you? he texted in response.
Turn around.
Clint bolted up from his chair and turned. She stood on the opposite side of the patio, just inside the door.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked.
“Trying to make things right.” She walked over to him.
Now that he was standing face-to-face with her, now that he knew she was safe, all of the worry vanished and anger surfaced. “And making it right means letting me worry half to damn death that something had happened to you? You call that caring, Lil?”
Lily had expected him to be angry. She would have been if the situations were reversed. But she hadn’t expected to feel anger in return. She bit down on the urge to reply in kind, walked past him and went into the kitchen.
He entered as she was getting a beer from the refrigerator and slammed the door behind him.
“What the hell were you thinking?” His voice was angry enough to have her hackles rise. This wasn’t how she’d hoped it would go, but maybe she deserved no less.
“Excuse me?” She arched her eyebrows haughtily, knowing it would spur him on.
“You heard me. I didn’t need protecting. And you could have at least talked to me before you took off.”
“I had to take care of things myself.”
“By running away? And what if that Johnny B had found you? What were you going to do, set him on fire?”
“If necessary.”
“Smart, real smart.” The mocking tone of his voice jacked her anger higher. He deserved his anger but why the hell couldn’t he understand that she had been trying to protect him?
“Fuck you, Clint!”
He grinned at her and it wasn’t a friendly sort of expression. More like a predator closing in on its prey. “You don’t want to start up with me, sugar.”
“Fuck you.” Not much of a comeback, but at the moment it was all she had. His nearness was making her weak. She didn’t want to fight, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“You making that a formal offer, honey?” His tone was teasing, but there was nothing of a jest in his eyes.
Okay, this was getting out of hand and at the moment she couldn’t tell if he was offering a truce or just being mean and setting her up for a fall. Whatever the case, she wasn’t prepared, so she took the coward’s way and went for the door.
Clint grabbed her wrist to stop her.
“Let go of me,” she warned.
“Or?”
Lily hissed and raised her hand to hit him, only to have him catch her fist before it made contact. She tore free and backed away, stopping only when her backside bumped into the kitchen table.
Clint stalked over to her, putting his hands on the table on either side of her.
“Or?” he asked again.
“Move, Clint.”
“Or?” The heat was back in his eyes.
“Or we’re gonna have a big problem.”
“Oh we already have a problem, Lily.
“Do we?” Her eyes met his and held. “And what might that be?”
“This.”
At the same moment the word came from his lips, he reached behind her with his left arm and pulled her against him. Her breath came out in a small rush a moment before his lips closed on hers.
As Clint’s arm tightened around her, she pressed into him. It was a lusty battle of tongues and teeth, hands gripping and roving, bodies straining into one another. Clint growled in protest when she pushed back from him.
“Don’t stop now, honey.”
She shook her head and blew out her breath. She couldn’t play this game. Not with him. It was too costly and she couldn’t take the strain of it. “Clint, I came to explain.”
He cocked his head slightly to one side. “I’m listening.”
“Really?”
“I said I’m listening.”
“Okay.” She took a breath and steeled herself. “You affect me like a drug and right now there’s nothing I want more than to get you out of those clothes and inside me. But—”
She raised both hands and pressed them against his chest when he moved to pull her back to him. “But—I need you to know that I left because I didn’t want to bring any more trouble to you or Cam. When Cam got shot—”
“No one blamed you for that, Lil.” Some of the heat went out of his tone.
“But—” She kept the pressure on his chest, looking up at him. She couldn’t tell if he meant it. “But it was my fault. If it wasn’t for me, Eddie wouldn’t have brought those thugs—”
“Fuck Eddie. You’re not responsible for him. Don’t you think Cam and I know that? You didn’t make a deal with that loan shark and you didn’t bring him here. That was Eddie. Cam getting shot was his fault, not yours.”
“But I—”
“Lil, the only thing you screwed up on was walking away. I love you. Don’t you know that? And I’m in it for good or bad. I thought you were too. I thought you trusted me.”
“Oh my god, Clint, it had nothing to do with trust. I just didn’t want you to get hurt. I thought if—”
“You thought wrong, honey.”
Her eyes searched his for a long time. What she saw was him being honest with her, him forgiving her. And him wanting her.
She fisted his shirt in both hands and yanked him to her.
There was nothing gentle in his lips as they staked a claim on hers. Teeth nipped and tongues clashed. Breath came hard and fast. Clint gave no care to the damage to her clothing as he tugged and tore anything that barred him hands from her flesh. His hand moved between her legs to the wetness that clearly spelled her desire.
She was no less impatient as she stripped his shirt off then started on his jeans. By the time his Levi’s were bunched around his knees, he was past the point of caring about anything except sinking deep inside the liquid silk between her legs that was becoming wetter with each stroke of his fingers.
Lily tore free from his mouth as his fingers stroked faster inside her. Her fingers dug into the top of his shoulders, her breath a series of pants. She was so close.
“Let go, sugar.”
His lusty croon was all she needed to send her tumbling over the edge. Her sex clenched to the accompaniment of a low throaty moan she made no attempt to silence.
“In me,” she panted before the climax could subside.
The smile he flashed her was all the time it took for him to lift her up, supporting her with his hands firm on her ass. Lily wound her legs around him and in one fluid motion, he slid inside.
A quick “ahh” went along with the momentary flash of pain. It’d been a while and it took her body a few seconds to begin to adjust to the sensation of being so full.
A few seconds was all she allowed. Hanging on to his shoulders, she bucked against him, the motion driving him deeper. Clint’s breath hissed, his eyes locked on to hers and everything around them vanished.
She couldn’t explain it any other way. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was the feel of him inside her and the hard, driving rhythm of his body. She met him stroke for stroke, feeling sensation build to the point of madness.
“Now,” she groaned. “Please. Now, now, now.”
Almost before the last two words were out of her mouth, an orgasm ripped through her. Not blossomed, flowered or flowed. Nothing so tame could describe it. It ripped. Raw and primal, its force had her throwing back her head and screaming.
On and on, one wave after another pounded her. She welcomed it, wanted it and gave herself completely to it. When at last he slowed his pace, she lifted her head to look at him and was met with a look hot enough to have her tightening around him in anticipation.
Clint worked his feet out of his boots with her still wound around him, then stepped out of his jeans and carried her into the family room. Lily hung on as he sat down on the couch, the position impaling her fully on his erection.
She grinned and urged him onto his back. The moment he was supine, she braced her hands on his chest and started a rhythm of her own. Slow at first then faster as his eyes darkened and his hands tightened on her thighs.
Gone were thoughts of explanations. Now there was only him and the tension building inside both of them. She could feel him getting close and it drove her higher. She saw it in his eyes, and that shoved her over the edge. A free fall of overwhelming sensation claimed her as she rode out the storm. When at last reason returned, she lay down on him, feeling the rapid beat of his heart and the sweat-damp skin hot against her own.
