“Changed—” He broke off when he realized what Quinn meant. He knew, which meant Hayley also knew, where Ash had spent most of the night.
The other man was looking at him steadily, but there was nothing of accusation in his gaze. “Not a surprise, Crenshaw. I am amazed—and impressed—that you waited until she had herself back again.”
Brady stared down at Cutter, who had arrived to sit at—actually on—his feet and grin. There was no other word for the dog’s expression. “Had to,” he muttered. “Would’ve been…wrong.”
“Yes. And that you waited says a great deal about you. You ever get tired of wearing that badge, come see me.”
Brady’s head came up sharply. Saw in Quinn’s level gaze that he meant it. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “I like what you do.”
He looked over at Ash again and this time caught her watching him. And the smile on her face brought last night crashing down on him until all he wanted to do was grab her and cart her back to his bed.
Quinn laughed. And at Brady’s sharp look, he merely gave a half shrug and said, “Cutter told us this was coming almost from day one.”
Brady looked down at the dog again. It wasn’t only a grin, it was a smug grin. An expression he would have laughed at applying to a dog just…two and a half weeks ago.
He looked back at Quinn. “What are you talking about?”
Quinn proceeded to tell him of a one hundred percent track record Cutter had in another realm besides helping and comforting people. If it had been anyone other than Quinn Foxworth, he wouldn’t have believed a word of it. Even then he couldn’t help saying, “You’re as reality based as I am, but you believe it?”
“Ten for ten is pretty solid evidence.” Quinn grinned at him. “Make that eleven for eleven, now.”
“But he’s—”
“A dog. Yeah. I noticed.” Brady gave him an exasperated look. “I get it. I know how hard it was for me to believe. And,” he added pointedly, “how much better I felt when I just gave in to the inevitable.”
Quinn was having far too much fun with him over this. “Why do I get the feeling you enjoy this?”
“Because it reminds me of what it was like to find Hayley.”
Quinn’s voice had gone quiet, and the expression on his face as he looked over at his wife sent a flood of memories through Brady. Memories from last night, accompanied by a rush of heat. It had been the most amazing night of his life, and he wanted a long, unbroken string of them. Nights spent with Ash in his arms, the woman who had come to him last night, wounded but whole, the heavy burden she’d been carrying shifted, free of the fear at last. True, she had an entirely new ordeal to deal with, and he couldn’t imagine a worse betrayal. Except the kind she thought she’d been dealing with, the betrayal of her own mind.
But now he knew she had the capacity to do it.
More importantly, she knew she had the capacity to do it.
* * *
“Hope they don’t get stuck somewhere,” Brady said as the Foxworths drove off into the snow that had just begun to fall again. “So Hayley just suddenly wanted to go skiing?”
“They don’t even ski.” Ashley said it blandly, smiling inwardly as Brady looked bewildered.
“But she said—”
“They wanted to give us some time. Alone.”
He went still. She saw his expression change, saw the sudden anticipation. But he only said, “Oh.”
She wondered why, then understood he, being Brady, wouldn’t assume anything. Given the situation, that her life was so tangled, he was still leaving the decision to her. He wouldn’t make the first move. And she found herself longing for the day he did; then she’d know the worst was over.
But for now she merely said, “And they left Cutter in case we…needed direction.”
Brady glanced over to where the dog was plopped on his bed, watching them alertly. After what Ashley had told him about how the dog had practically herded her to his door last night, he wasn’t sure he doubted anything he’d heard about the animal anymore.
“I’m beginning to think that dog isn’t really a dog,” he muttered.
“Hayley says she won’t be surprised if they find out one day he’s an animagus.”
Brady blinked. “A shape-shifting wizard?”
She smiled, widely. “You really have read those books.”
“You didn’t believe me?”
She lowered her gaze. “I thought maybe you just wanted to make me feel better.”
“Well, I did, but it’s true.”
“How about now?”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
She looked up at him again. “Want to make me feel better now?”
The heat that flared in his gaze sent her pulse racing. “I’ve been wanting that since we got up.”
He might not make the first move, but once she had, he wasted no time. And she was suddenly reminded—as if she’d needed it—just how strong he was when he swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the bed they’d vacated just a couple of hours ago. And he proceeded to prove to her that he knew exactly how to make her feel better, taking his time until there wasn’t an inch of her that didn’t feel treasured. Loved.
She shied away from the word even mentally, in her own version of not wanting to assume. She simply gave herself over to the pleasure of his touch, the stroke of his hands and the feel of his mouth as he sucked at her nipples while stroking the very core of her, which was already hot, slick and ready. But when he moved next, it wasn’t as she expected. He replaced the fingers that had been caressing her with his mouth and tongue, until she was biting back a scream at the sheer intensity of it. And then she remembered she didn’t have to hold back—the house was empty except for a dog who’d made it clear this had been his plan all along.
She screamed Brady’s name as she burst into heat and sensation. And she had never felt anything more perfect than when he slid into her as her body was still convulsing, driving her upward again before the last throes had even faded. And when he let out a low, heartfelt oath as he shuddered above her, she grabbed him and held on, wanting him so deeply inside her that he would stay forever.
* * *
Brady woke to Ash curled up in the curve of his body, his arm around her just under the soft curve of her breasts. To his amazement, after the day they’d spent, his body made clear it was ready for more. He’d thought the need would slow down now that it had been sated a bit, but obviously he was wrong.
Or he had underestimated the power of the attraction between them.
But she was sleeping so soundly that he didn’t move, didn’t want to wake her. Peaceful sleep had been nonexistent for her for a very long time. So he lay still, only shifting his head so that he could look out the window, where he could see snow was still falling, albeit lightly.
He wondered what Hayley and Quinn were really doing, since the skiing was evidently a pretense. Maybe, when this was over, he should offer to take them skiing, if they had any real interest. He was no instructor, but he’d taught a youth class once and it had gone fairly well. Maybe—
There was a loud, sudden crack of sound, familiar to mountain-raised Brady as a branch overloaded with snow giving up under the weight. But he had only a moment to categorize the sound before another wiped all other thought from his mind.
Ash screamed.
The sound of it was a physical thing to him, stabbing him as if it were a blade. He pulled her hard against him, wrapping around her as it came again.
“Ash, it’s all right. Wake up, it’s all right.”
She went rigid against him. He shifted so he could see her face. Her eyes were wide-open, and the look of horror in them stabbed him all over again.
“It’s all right,” he repeated. “The noise was just a branch breaking with all the snow.”
“The nightmare.” She shuddered, and he felt it ripple almost violently through her. Apprehension began to steal over him; there was more to this, he could sense it. But he tried again to calm her.
“It’s okay, Ash. There’s no monster, it was just your dream.”
She looked directly at him then, and he felt an even deeper qualm when none of the horror in her gaze faded. She lifted her hands, steepling them in front of her face as if praying, but pressing them to her mouth as if to stifle another scream.
“It wasn’t a monster,” she whispered. “It never was.”
“Ash?” he said gently when she stopped.
“And it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. It was real.”
He was afraid to say anything that might disrupt this. He didn’t have to hear the words to know how critical, how crucial this was. So he just held her, and waited.
“It was real,” she said again. “I was really in that dark hallway. Outside my room. I’d heard Dad in his den in the middle of the night and was worried, so I got up to go check on him.”
At eight years old, she’s looking after her father. The thought roiled his gut even more. Still, he waited. She went on in a sort of numbed tone that told him she was barely hanging on.
“I opened the door and saw her go into the den.” He didn’t ask who—he knew. “Brady,” she said, and he could hear the heartbreak in her voice, which damned near broke his in turn. “She had a gun. I don’t think I recognized it back then, it was just a shape in her hand, but now I remember.”
The branch breaking, he realized. It had been almost as loud as a gunshot. It must have triggered this, this flood of memory.
“Ash—”
“He didn’t do it. Brady, he didn’t do it!” She was clutching at him now. “He didn’t kill himself.”
He was familiar enough with the way people grasped at things when they were in shock, the way they fixated on anything except the ugly core of what had happened. And he supposed in the end this would be what would be most important to her. At least he hoped so; much better for this realization to be the most important to her. This one, not the other.
Not the ugly fact that her mother had murdered her father.
CHAPTER 33
“Quinn? Where are you, really?”
Brady’s voice was sharp, commanding. As he must sound snapping out orders in an emergency. Ashley knew she was seizing on this to avoid thinking about the rest, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Her mind was darting around, looking for anything to think about except the reality she was now face-to-face with.
He listened to Quinn’s answer. “Good. Head back. Now.”
He ended the call—was it a call if he’d made it using the Foxworth phone they’d left for them, the one with the walkie-talkie function?—before Quinn could have done anything more than agree. She wondered—seizing on this now—how many people there were in the world who would dare give a man like Quinn Foxworth orders like that. Not many, she guessed. And yet Brady had, and Quinn had apparently accepted it. Which said as much about Brady as it did about Quinn.
“They’re on their way back.” He set down the phone and resumed his pacing. And Ashley resumed watching him, the way he moved, the long, powerful strides, the barely leashed strength of him. He looked fierce, almost dangerous, and she realized that he could be, if necessary, just that. And she found that of all the things, all the places her desperate brain had darted off to, the only one that had to power to truly distract her was Brady, and the wonder they’d found together.
“Brady—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Wait until they get here. I don’t want you to have to go through this more than once.”
She lapsed into silence, but it was with a sense of realization, of how different this felt, Brady’s protective instinct, compared to…others. Her mind shied away from it so vigorously it almost made her dizzy, and she knew he was right. Getting through this once would be about all she could handle. Even Cutter’s comforting only took the edge off.
Hayley and Quinn didn’t waste any time once they arrived. They all sat around the table, and Quinn looked at Brady and said simply, “Go.”
Brady sucked in a breath. “Details of how later, but the bottom line is, Ash’s nightmares were born in reality. She saw her mother go into her father’s den with a handgun and moments later heard the shot.”
Hayley gasped, but Quinn’s expression shifted to one very similar to Brady’s—fierce, determined. And somehow, hearing it said flatly like that, with utter conviction, by the one man she trusted above all others, made it real. Truth. And suddenly her mind settled, quit caroming around and arrowed toward the undeniable truth. And something new, something hot and fierce, began to bubble up inside her.
“Well, that tears it open,” Quinn said. “Lay it all out,” he said, his order as clear as Brady’s had been. And as quickly, Brady showed the same respect and complied.
“My theory is this. Her mother realized from the description of the recurring nightmare that started six months ago that Ash had witnessed her going in to murder her husband. And so she started this…campaign to have her declared mentally ill, so if she remembered completely, it would be dismissed.”
The memory of all she’d gone through, all the treatments, the crippling drugs, all the fear and horror at what was happening to her, rose up and tried to swamp her. But it hit the rapidly rising wall of that new factor, that thing she’d never felt during this entire ordeal until now. Cutter nudged her, and she looked at the dog. Oddly, his expression seemed almost approving. And she remembered suddenly that day at the clinic, when her mother had arrived and the dog had growled and put himself between her and Ashley. You knew even then, didn’t you? She leaned over and kissed the top of the dog’s head.
“And incompetent to manage the trust fund,” Quinn said grimly.
“Especially that,” Brady said, sounding just as harsh. “Bottom line, the murder was for the money, but gaslighting Ash was to save herself from getting caught.”
“I suppose I should be grateful she didn’t just kill me, too.”
Everyone stopped dead and stared at Ashley as she spoke icily. She didn’t wonder why; they’d been dealing with such a broken soul, this cold fury must have startled them all.
“Ash?” Brady said after a moment. “I know this is horrible, but we have to—”
“What it is is evil.” She said it in that same icy tone. “That…woman murdered the sweetest, most loving man in the world, for money, and it wasn’t even that much at the time. Worse, she made it look as if he’d killed himself, which to an eight-year-old means he hadn’t loved her enough to stay. And she got away with it, for twenty years. But when there was just a chance she might be found out, she tried her best to destroy her own daughter’s mind and heart.”
Brady was staring at her, with a touch of what she could only call awe. And that warmed her as much as that new force growing within her. “She put you through the worst kind of hell. That you’re even still functioning is a miracle and testament to your strength.”
“I haven’t been strong, but I am now.” She finally gave a name to that new, solid wall of emotion that was holding everything else—pain, misery, fear, all of it—at bay. “And I am furious.”
The slow smile that lifted one corner of Brady’s mouth—that luscious, wonderful mouth—showed her there was still room for one more emotion in her newly fierce heart.
“What you are,” he said in a tone that matched the smile, “is glorious.”
* * *
Brady wondered, for just a moment, if he’d known. If somehow, on some level, he’d known this Ash existed. If he’d sensed that beneath the pain, the anguish and the nearly broken spirit, this fierce, strong woman lived. Maybe that was what had drawn him. Maybe it wasn’t that he hadn’t learned his lesson with Liz—maybe he had, and completely.
In the end, it didn’t matter if he’d known. What mattered was that his fear that this ugly truth would destroy her was not only unfounded but seemed absurd in the light of the way she’d come back fighting. Now that she knew, now that she was sure of herself, Ashley Jordan seemed…indomitable. The kind of woman who could take what life threw and spit back in its face.
The kind of woman he’d never expected to find.
“What do you want done, Ashley?”
Quinn’s quiet question snapped him out of the reverie he’d slipped into, visions of last night and this afternoon spinning out into a lifetime of the same sweet wildness filling all the days of the rest of his life.
“What are the options?” Ash said, so briskly it almost made him smile all over again.
Quinn answered in the same way. “Firstly, you do have the option of doing nothing. We can build you a package of proof that you’re mentally fine and help you get started somewhere else, if that’s what you choose.”
Brady stared at Quinn, not quite able to believe what he was hearing. Quinn turned his head as if he’d felt it, and said quietly, “This is one of those points where our goals diverge. We do what Ashley wants.”
“Just let her get away with it? She murdered my dad!” Brady felt relieved at Ash’s reaction. Just the sound of her outrage at the idea reassured him she was going to be okay. He relaxed again.
Quinn looked back at Ash. “It’s just one option. And one I didn’t expect you to take. So, next. I’m not certain we could prove your mother guilty in a court of law of the murder of your father. Gavin is the best, so anything’s possible, but a twenty-year-old crime where it’s entirely reasonable that her DNA would be all over anyway, and with the only new evidence an eight-year-old’s suppressed memory, would be a difficult challenge.” Quinn’s mouth quirked. “Of course, that’s what Gavin likes best.”
Brady had to rein in what he was sure would be a silly grin as Quinn talked so easily of Gavin de Marco. The guy had written the book on blowing up criminal cases.
“I hate thinking she’ll get away with it,” Ash said.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set Page 69
