Darker the Release (11 page)

Kelly was curled up in a ball when he returned, which concerned him enough to push him back into some semblance of coherence.

“Are you all right?” he asked thickly, getting under the covers with her. “Did I hurt you?”

Kelly shook her head. “I’m fine. It was good.” She pushed her hair out of her face and tried to smile at him. “Just worn out.”

The clench in his chest eased, and he pulled her into his arms. Admitted, “Me too.”

He liked the way she nestled against him, even though the heat of her body only magnified the heat of his.

He wanted to say something else. But he wasn’t quite sure what. So he didn’t end up saying anything. Just stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

No matter how close they’d been just now, how deeply he’d been buried in her, Caleb still wanted even more. He wanted all of her. Wanted to give her all of him.

But it still felt like there were invisible barriers standing in their way.

What had she wanted with that key?

And why was Wes so suspicious of her?

And what would she do if she ever found out some of things he had done?

As he held her in the dark, he felt an incongruous surge of tenderness overtaking him unexpectedly.

Caleb wanted to protect her from anything that threatened her. From everything that might hurt her.

The most bitter irony of all was that “everything” included himself.

She shifted against him in her sleep, and one of her hands unconsciously squeezed at his side.

He fell asleep soon afterward.

The next morning he didn’t want to get out of bed.

Kelly was still asleep beside him, looking young, beautiful, and rumpled with her messy hair and closed eyes. He had a long day at work—lasting through a dinner meeting, which probably wouldn’t be over until nine. And his body was exhausted, completely drained, as if last night—as if the last two months—had used up all of his energy.

He just wanted to stay in bed and sleep. With Kelly. But it was just Monday, and the weekend was a long way away.

He reached over for his phone on the nightstand, vaguely hoping there hadn’t been too many emails coming in overnight, although he knew such a hope was futile.

The first thing he saw was a text from Wes.

He clicked on it, pulling up the full message.

I found something on Kelly. Tell me if you want to know what it is. If you don’t, I won’t mention it again.

Caleb stared at the message, a surge of both fear and curiosity rising up at what the words meant.

Wes wouldn’t have posed it like this unless what he’d found was significant.

Maybe it was about the Albanian ex-lover.

Maybe it was about what she’d wanted that key for.

Maybe it would make all of the loose ends about her finally click into place.

“Something bad?” a drowsy voice came from beside him.

He turned and saw that Kelly was awake, watching him with big blue eyes that looked fond and trusting and a little worried. “No. Just work.”

“It’s not even six yet. You have at least another half hour to sleep.” She reached out to him with a smile. “Don’t get up yet.”

He smiled back at her, the tension in his chest relaxing. This was too good. It was everything he’d ever wanted—without even knowing he’d wanted it. He wasn’t going to blow it with his typical controlling nature and paranoia. He tapped out
No thanks
to Wes and put the phone down.

Whatever Kelly was hiding from him, she would tell him when she was ready. She wasn’t out to hurt him any more than he wanted to hurt her.

He drew her into his arms and settled her against him, relaxing as she started to stroke his chest and belly.

“Close your eyes for a few more minutes,” she murmured, pressing a kiss against his shoulder. “The world isn’t going to fall apart if you sleep another half hour.”

He smiled. “Sometimes it feels like it might.”

“That’s your colossal ego talking. I promise you it won’t.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

He closed his eyes, but he didn’t go back to sleep. He just held her until six thirty, wondering what he’d ever done to deserve someone like her in his life.

He was on his way to his business dinner that evening when he got a call from Sean Moore.

He knew it wouldn’t be good news as soon as he saw the man’s name on his phone.

Moore never called just to chat.

“What’s going on?” he asked, pausing in the hall and connecting the call.

“I had a break-in last night.”

Caleb’s body went cold. “What was stolen?”

“An old computer. My wife uses it for her recipes and computer games. It used to be mine.”

“Nothing was on it, was it?”

“I’d deleted everything work related, but sometimes things can be retrieved.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know. Professionals. My security system isn’t peanuts, you know. You need to protect yourself.”

“I’m protected. Let me know if I can do anything.”

“Will do.”

When Caleb hung up, he felt rattled and anxious in a way he almost never was.

There was legally nothing that could be done to him. But if certain things became public, then Kelly would find out about them. She would never forgive him. She would leave him. He knew it for sure.

The thought panicked him so much he did his normal mental-defenses thing and focused on what he could control.

He had to get through this business meeting. Then he would call in a few favors to find out who was investigating Sean Moore. If they found out the source of the search, then he’d be in a much better position to make it stop.

Get through the dinner. Find out the source of the investigation. Stop it.

These were things he could do.

Living without Kelly, now that he’d found her, was something he simply couldn’t do.

Three hours later he was in his home office, staring at more email on his computer.

He despised his email so much this evening that he felt vaguely nauseated at the sight of so many unanswered messages.

The meeting over dinner had been fine. Then he’d made some calls and gotten things going on finding out who was looking into Sean Moore.

But there was nothing else he could do. Kelly wasn’t even here. She’d gone out to dinner with her friend Reese, so he couldn’t even bury himself in her and start to feel better.

He felt himself going into an emotional spiral of anxiety, stress, and helplessness. He could feel it happening. It had happened before. And every time it had, he’d done things he’d ended up regretting.

He needed Kelly. She could help him stop it. He pulled out his phone and texted her.
You coming over tonight?

She’d said she probably would, but it hadn’t been definite.

It was a few minutes before she answered.
Yeah. I will. You okay?

Sure.

He wasn’t okay. He hated feeling this way. The first time it had ever happened had been when he was ten, sitting next to Mallory’s bed in the hospital, watching her die and having absolutely no way to stop it.

There was no reason to feel that way now, but he did.

He pulled out his phone again and texted Wes.
Tell me.

A minute or two later a reply came through.
Check your email.

Caleb had his email open, so he watched as a new message popped up in his in-box.

Attached was a scanned copy of some sort of document. He felt wrong, guilty, like he was stomping all over Kelly’s privacy, as he clicked it to pull it up.

But he still did it.

It was an adoption record. Kelly’s adoption record, which had somehow been hidden from all of his searches.

The Watsons had adopted her when she’d been almost eleven. He stared down at the names of her biological parents.

He recognized her father’s name. There was no way he would miss it.

It took a full five minutes for the reality to process.

When it finally did, the document, his computer screen, his monitor, his whole office blurred in front of his eyes.

He was shaking all the way from his teeth down to his feet. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t process it. It left him cold and numb.

Her father had worked for Vendella as a research scientist. Caleb had been his boss. He thought he might have even seen her as a little girl once at a company picnic, although the memory was too vague now to retrieve.

Her father had been murdered. Her mother had been sure Vendella had been responsible. And now Kelly was here—with him, hiding what she absolutely must have known.

The picture came together slowly, but it clicked into place with perfect precision.

She was here on purpose. She thought he had killed her father. She wanted him to pay. There was no Albanian gangster. Nothing about what they’d had together was real.

All of it—all of it—nothing but the worst kind of lies.

He’d loved her, but she didn’t love him.

She must hate him. She must absolutely, utterly hate him to have done what she’d done, used him so heartlessly, not even cared when he’d fallen head-over-heels in love with her.

He was shaking so much now that his teeth were chattering, so he stifled it, held it back.

Tried to hold everything back.

All his life he had been smart and careful. All his life he’d protected his heart. Never in his life had he been a fool.

Until now.

It hurt so much he couldn’t even feel it anymore, but he kept holding it back until he thought he might actually be sick.

Then his phone vibrated with a text and he reached for it blindly, taking a full minute before he could focus enough to read the words.

I’m coming over now.
Kelly. Coming to him. Acting like nothing had changed. Like they were really in love.

When they weren’t. They just weren’t.

Caleb finally lost it. With a roar of anguished rage, he grabbed his sleek, high-end computer monitor, yanked it away from the cords, and hurled it across the room to slam against the far wall.

The monitor broke into pieces with a resounding crash, smashed remnants littering the polished floor.

He stared at what he’d destroyed, trying to feel relief and satisfaction at this embodiment of his feelings.

He couldn’t. It hadn’t worked.

Because his heart was just as broken as that monitor.

He saw her car pull up less than an hour later.

He wasn’t any more controlled than he’d been before, and he had no idea what he would say when he saw her.

There was nothing he could do. Nothing that would come close to equaling the damage she’d done to him.

So he waited in a numb stupor, assuming the answer would come to him when he saw her.

He hadn’t left his office, and Breah must have told her where he was, because Kelly tapped on the door and opened it a few minutes later.

“Caleb?” she asked, coming into the room, looking fresh and lovely and as untouched as she’d ever been. Completely innocent. Completely a lie. “Are you—?” Her eyes landed on his face, and she must have seen something there. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

She came over toward him, but then she obviously saw the wreck of the monitor, which was still in pieces on the other side of the room. “God, what happened, Caleb? Are you okay?”

He stood up because that was how one faced an enemy.

He couldn’t take a step, though. Couldn’t speak.

She hurried over to him, reaching out to cling to his shirt. “Caleb, sweetie, what’s the matter? What happened?”

Her eyes were wide and worried and tender, and he still—even now—could swear that she meant it, that she cared for him, that she was scared for him, that she wanted to take care of him.

And it hurt more than anything ever had.

Because he still—almost—believed her.

“Please, Caleb.” She reached up to take his face in her hands. “Tell me what happened.”

Then suddenly he was hit with an inspiration—blinding, cold, and exactly right. “It’s…” He cleared his throat to make his voice work. “It’s…just work. One of my projects fell through. I spent four years on it.”

Her face twisted with sympathy. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. You should have called, and I would have come back right away.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s nothing to worry about.”

He was lying to her now, the way she’d always lied to him. If she could do it to him, then he could do it back.

He could play this game just as well as she could. She wasn’t the master here.

“Don’t lie to me, sweetie.” She wrapped her arms around him and held him. An hour ago he would have needed the embrace, he would have taken such comfort in it.

Now he wrapped his arms around her too, and he pretended that nothing had changed.

She thought she could break him, but she couldn’t.

He was going to find out what was really going on here. By the time this thing was over, he would have broken her.

Kelly took Ralph, Caleb’s German shepherd, for a walk the following morning.

She’d spent the night with him last night because he’d wanted her to, although they hadn’t had sex before bed. He’d evidently had an emotional blow from a failure at work, so she’d known he needed support, and maybe her presence was enough to make a difference. Then she’d woken up early—much earlier than normal—and she’d checked her phone to see a text from Jack that said simply,
Call me ASAP
.

She’d sent him the file from the storage room—she’d had to put it in the mail because she couldn’t risk arranging an in-person meeting—and she’d been surprised not to hear anything back from him until now.

She had no options other than to wait to get a response from him, though, so that was what she’d been doing.

But as soon as she saw the message, she felt a surge of impatience that couldn’t be denied. There was no way she could wait for Caleb to get dressed and leave the house before she talked to Jack, so she’d decided to take Ralph on an early walk through the extensive acreage that made up Caleb’s property.

As soon as she was beyond the walls that surrounded the house proper, she pulled out her phone to call Jack.

It wasn’t even six in the morning yet, but he’d said to call as soon as possible, and she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

She should have heard from him before now anyway.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, connecting the call.

“It’s Kelly.”

“Kelly.” His voice sounded more alert, as if he had woken up. “What time is it?”

“It’s early. Sorry. I just got your message.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He paused, and she could picture him sitting up in bed. “What the hell did you do?”

She blinked, stopping on a hill where she could see the sun rising behind thick gray clouds. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what the fuck did you do? Did you break into the storage room on your own? After I told you it was too dangerous?”

She frowned, not at all expecting this. “Yes. I did. I sent you the file I found two days ago.”

“I know! I’ve been sick in bed with the flu, and I finally managed to check in with the office about what I missed and found you acting like an idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”

She felt strange—shocked by the level of his outrage—and was immediately defensive. “This is my thing, Jack,” she said slowly. “I can do anything I want.”

“But you have no idea how dangerous this is. If these people were prepared to kill your father, do you think they’d hesitate at all to hurt you if they found you were—”

“Stop it,” Kelly interrupted, feeling rattled and irrationally guilty. “I’m paying you for your help. Not your protection. There is a deadline here, and I couldn’t wait for you to get your guys to finally do it. Now tell me what you found.”

Jack gave an audible sigh, like he was resigning himself to the situation. “My guys are working on it, trying to put the whole picture together. I don’t know anything yet.”

“So you wanted me to call you just to—”

“To yell at you for being stupid. Yeah.”

She gave a sigh very similar to the one she’d heard from him a minute ago. “I know it was stupid, Jack. But you don’t seem to understand. I don’t care anymore. I’ll take any risk I need to take to get this over with. I have to know the truth. I
have
to know.” Her voice broke on the last word, as she thought about Caleb, about how much he’d opened up to her, about how vulnerable he’d made himself with her.

Just to have her take advantage of it.

She didn’t want to be that person. The person who would do such a thing to another. She hated that she’d evidently become someone like that.

Maybe it was who she’d always been.

“What happened, Kelly?” Jack’s tone was different now, careful. “Why the rush?”

“I don’t know. Caleb has this friend who seems suspicious of me, and I think he’s been sniffing around. I don’t want him to find out anything. Can you check into my background story and add some sort of false clues, to make sure he doesn’t find anything?”

“Yeah. Give me one day to put the stuff together, and then I’ll have something for you. In the meantime, why don’t you get yourself out of there? If this friend is really sniffing around, it could seriously be dangerous.”

“I’ll tell Caleb I’ve got a job or something to do, so I can make myself scarce today, but I’m not going to totally withdraw. He’d never believe any excuse I gave him, and that would just make him think something was wrong. I’m not going to end this until I know the truth.”

“Okay. But be careful. I’m liking this less and less.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it either, but that’s not really the point.”

“I know. I know. The truth shall set you free and all that shit.” Jack gave a soft, exasperated groan. “I’ll have you know I worried a lot less before I met you.”

That made her feel strange and uncomfortable. She didn’t like the idea that Jack—that anyone—was worrying about her. “No one asked you to worry.”

“Yeah, but I’m a go-getter, you know. I don’t wait to be asked.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Who would have thought the tough security type would be a mother hen at heart?”

“Just don’t spread it around. Don’t want to ruin my tough-guy image.”

“My lips are sealed. Are you feeling better? Sorry you had the flu. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard back.”

“Yeah, sorry about the delay. I feel basically alive today, which wasn’t true of the last two days.”

“Good. Well, I better go.”

“Okay. Take care. Don’t do anything else stupid.”

“It’s too late for that kind of advice.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Kelly said goodbye and disconnected the call, lowering the phone and staring at Ralph, who was running in circles trying to catch a bird, which seemed to be intentionally teasing the dog.

This was almost over. Pretty soon she would have the answers she needed.

And she wouldn’t have to feel like this—completely conflicted, completely helpless, completely trapped in her feelings and what she was afraid might be true. In this downward spiral that had no end.

She could hardly believe that, not so long ago, she’d started out on this plan to coldly, heartlessly bring Caleb Marshall down.

When now all she wanted to do was prove he wasn’t guilty at all.

She was feeling anxious and restless when she got back to the house. What she’d suggested to Jack was a good idea. She would make up an excuse today to stay away from Caleb. She would go back to her apartment and get her grounding again. Then she would know the truth and she could figure out what to do from there.

The more distance she could get from him to prepare for the final step, the better it would be.

He was coming down the stairs, dressed in an expensive black business suit, when she came back into the house.

She paused, staring up at him as he descended.

For a moment she lost her breath. He was so gorgeous and so confident, and intelligence, masculinity, and depth radiated off of him like some sort of invisible force field.

And there was something so tender underneath it all—something she never would have dreamed of until she’d gotten to know him.

He smiled at her. “You’re up early.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t seem to stay in bed. It’s a beautiful day.”

“I know. I was just checking my schedule, and I have a light afternoon. I thought I might cut out early.”

She blinked, so surprised she couldn’t think of anything to say immediately. “Leave work early?” He never did anything like that.

“Yeah. Do you want to do something outside? It’s too nice a day to stay indoors.” He was still smiling—this time in a slow, seductive way that was almost impossible to resist.

This wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. She was going to make up an excuse today to stay away from him. “I’ve got to finish up a portrait today,” she began, trying to fall back on the reason she’d come up with earlier.

He took her head in his hands and leaned down into a soft kiss. “Well, finish it up quickly so we can spend the afternoon together. I think I can get away by two.”

He’d had a really hard day yesterday. She still remembered how shocked and worried she’d been when she’d come home from her dinner with Reese to find him tense and shaky in his office, with his computer monitor in pieces on the floor. She’d never seen him lose control like that before.

It must have been a serious blow.

He needed her. He was playing it off right now, acting like it was just a casual, spontaneous idea, but he might really need her today, after what had happened yesterday.

No matter how smart and safe it would be to follow her initial plan, she didn’t want to let him down. So she heard herself saying, “Okay. I think I can finish up by then too.”

He leaned to kiss her again, smiling against her lips. “Good. I’m looking forward to it.”

She smiled too, happy that she’d managed to please him.

It was just one more day.

In the scheme of things, how much damage could one more day do?

Caleb wanted to take a hike.

She wasn’t sure what had possessed him, since he wasn’t normally an outdoorsy person, except to take his dog to the park on Saturday mornings. But he seemed to have the idea in his head, and she couldn’t think of any reason to refuse.

She actually liked to hike, as long as they didn’t hike through woods.

He knew she was scared of the woods. Now he even knew why—or at least, as close to why as she was able to tell him. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to think he could take her there.

It would probably all be okay.

They drove a couple of hours outside the city to a national park. Caleb was in a strange mood. He was acting light and casual, the way he had that morning, but there was something tense underlying it. Like he was driven by a force he was masking with the superficial demeanor.

She assumed it still had to do with yesterday. He was still upset about it, but he was trying to move past the feeling, act normal, forget the pain with a pretense of happiness.

She understood. She’d felt that way before too. As if once you acted happy long enough, you could eventually feel that way again.

They left the car in the parking lot and started out on a trail that went over hills and grassland. It was fine. Caleb obviously wasn’t going to make her do anything that was traumatic for her. He loved her and wouldn’t want to hurt her.

So Kelly was feeling relaxed and better about the whole situation about an hour into the hike when the path wound around a hill and disappeared into a forested area.

She stopped short.

Caleb stopped too, looking masculine and sexy with wind-ruffled hair and a sheen of perspiration on his skin. The day was warm, and the sun was bright.

“I guess we should turn back,” Kelly said, feeling stupid for her phobia but recognizing her heart rate’s acceleration at just the sight of the trees.

“We don’t have to,” Caleb said, moving a hand to the middle of her back and resting it there.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we can try to keep going, if you’re up to it.”

She bit her lip and tried to control her breathing. “You know I’m not. You know what the woods do to me.”

“Yeah. I know. But don’t you want to get over it?” His voice was level, even, very controlled, like he was trying to calm a spooked animal.

“Of course I do.” She was starting to get a little annoyed, since he knew better than to push her like this. “But I can’t get over it. I’ve tried. It’s not just something you can force yourself through.”

“You went into the woods on the first day we met.”

“I know. But just the edges, and it was terrifying to do even that. I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t challenged me the way you had.”

“So we’ll just go into the edges now. We don’t have to go any farther than you want.”

She’d been staring at the trail disappearing into the trees, but now she glared up at him. “Why are you doing this? You know I have the phobia.”

“I know.” His face was a little strange—set, as if he’d determined something he was going through with now. Maybe he’d planned this whole thing from the beginning. “But I love you, and I’m not okay with you just living with something that cripples you like this. I want you to get better, and that means facing what you’re afraid of.”

If he’d posed it in any other way, she would have refused. But there was no objection she could give to what he’d said.

He did love her. She knew it. He wanted what was best for her. And if she didn’t even try to go into the woods right now—when he wanted her to get better—it would be like throwing his love back in his face.

She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do it.

“Okay,” she mumbled, swallowing over her fear. “I’ll try. But I don’t think I’ll get very far. I’ve tried to force myself before, and I’ve never been able to do it.”

“Just go as far as you can,” he murmured, stroking her back. “I’ll be right here with you.”

“Okay.” She took a long, shaky breath. “Okay.”

They walked slowly across the distance to the first of the trees, and Kelly’s fear intensified the closer they got. Caleb didn’t say anything, and she wasn’t capable of speaking when they got to the very edge.

He stood beside her, and she knew he was watching her, but she couldn’t look at anything but the tangle of branches, broken only by the well-worn trail cutting through them.

She’d tried before. The fear wasn’t something you could just talk yourself out of.

But Caleb wanted her to do this. He wanted her to heal.

And she wanted to heal too.

So she took the first step past the border of the woods.

Her vision blurred as panic spiraled up, and she reached out blindly toward Caleb beside her.

She found his shirt and clung to it, fisting her fingers in the fabric, and he pressed his hand against her back again.

“I’m right here,” he murmured. “Take another step.”

She did as he said, her knees so weak she could feel them buckling. She wasn’t sure she could have even kept standing had Caleb not been beside her—strong and solid as she held on to him, as he braced her with his hand on her back.