But then he’d seen her standing there, bare-legged and barefoot, looking lost and alone despite the fact she stood
in
an opulent hotel room, and self-defense had gone to hell in a handbasket. Those eyes of hers, he knew. Those damn swirling blue eyes, fringed by lashes long and dark without even the aid of mascara. They’d looked especially provocative against skin a few shades too pale. And her lips, that lush mouth of hers that looked startlingly like a dewy rose petal, had been dry, cracked.
Like an idiot, he’d wanted to moisten it himself.
Thank God he was a strong man. Thank God he knew that even if he couldn’t count on himself to keep his hand off, with a few well-aimed words, he could count on Bethany. With most women, a smile or wink, a suggestive word here and there, and they came running. Not Bethany. She recoiled from heat and honesty. She preferred impersonal. Telling her she looked beautiful was tantamount to telling her he never wanted to see her again. So he had. Because like an idiot, he did. But knew he shouldn’t.
She may well have killed his cousin.
Everything inside him rebelled violently at the thought. “They’re…” She looked from the garments in he hands and met his gaze. Her dilated pupils overrode the blue of her eyes, making them look dark, almost dazed.
“Perfect,” he finished for her. Classy. Elegant. Just like her. He’d picked the clothes out with great care, linen slacks and cotton blouses, silk pajamas, the muted tones she preferred. A black suit.
She fingered the fabrics gently. All but the underwear. She didn’t touch the slip or bra, the panties.
“You knew my size,” she whispered.
“A good guess.” Like hell. He knew everything about her, every exquisite, damning detail. He knew how her mouth felt, tasted. He knew how her eyes glazed over when he touched her breasts. He knew the soft little whimpers that rasped from her throat when he drove deep.
He knew what it felt like to wake up alone.
But last night he hadn’t slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the white sheet draped over Lance’s body. And then he saw Bethany. But rather than holding the fire poker, she held a child.
The disturbing image had kept him standing at the window until the first red rays of the sun streaked over the mountains.
Now she just kept looking at him, like the secrets to the universe might suddenly appear on a face he worked hard to keep impassive. He stayed where he was, kept his arms crossed over his chest, knowing if he moved so much as a muscle, he’d end up across the room and smoothing the hair from her face, pulling her into his arms. It was distracting enough seeing her in that bulky robe that kept falling open, revealing far too much creamy flesh.
Under no circumstances did he trust himself to touch.
She drew a soft blue blouse to her chest, blessedly obscuring his view of the swell of her breasts. “Why are you doing this, Dylan? Why are you helping me?”
Because he knew Lance’s secret, and she did not, damn it. Because he had to learn how far-reaching the consequences would be. He had to know just how radically he’d altered the course of his life. If fate had a good laugh and she went to prison—
He broke off the thought, not willing to travel down a treacherous road that would forever change everything.
“The St. Croixs stick together,” he told her, “if not in life, then in death.”
The light in her eyes dimmed. “I don’t understand you,” she whispered.
“No, Bethany,” he said, pushing free of the doorjamb and walking into the hall. “You never did.” That said, he turned and walked away.
Fire and ice just didn’t mix.
* * *
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die.”
A time to die.
Beth lowered her eyes and studied the freshly mowed grass of the cemetery. The crisp scent reminded her of times long ago, of laughter and skinned knees, simplicity and innocence.
“…a time to mourn and a time to dance … a time to love and a time to hate…”
The four days since Lance’s death were little more than a blur. She stared numbly at the polished white coffin, the green skirt hiding the gaping hole in the ground. By her side stood Dylan, so close she could feel the sleeve of his black suit brushing against her arm. Propriety dictated that she put some space between them, but she couldn’t bring herself to step from the warm hand at the small of her back. The feel of his palm helped keep her steady. Standing. She found gratitude in his silent gesture, uneasiness in her response.
“Lance St. Croix, grandson of the esteemed Judge Sebastian St. Croix, was a man to look up to and respect…”
The vertigo pushed closer, grew stronger. The midmorning sun was unusually hot, blazing from its perch in a cloudless blue sky. Spring. The season of rebirth. Burying a man seemed wrong.
Beth swallowed hard and concentrated on a Norfolk pine stretching against the horizon like an ill-placed Christmas tree. Still, she felt the expectant gazes on her, hostile and accusing.
You haven’t cried.
That would help, she knew. Openly grieving. Like her mother. Sierra Rae Kincaid Barton Winston Landaiche had returned from her Russian honeymoon the night before, and now made quite the picture of a grieving mother-in-law, black veil and all. Beth couldn’t help but wonder for what her mother mourned—the former son-in-law she’d spent little time with, or the severance of her link to one of Oregon’s most prominent families.
Next to Dylan, Judge St. Croix sat stoically in his wheelchair, presiding over the graveside service like a patriarch who’d endured one too many tragedy. He’d been bluster and invincibility on the evening news, but here, now, signs of age and grief made his face appear even more weathered than usual. The judge had attended too many funerals, Beth knew. Two wives and two sons, and now his cherished grandson.
There’d been no funeral for the great-grandchild.
Her throat convulsed and her chest tightened, but again, no tears slipped free. She wished they would. A few impulsive decisions, a few desperate measures, and so many
lives suffered the consequences. The innocent always paid
the highest.
Beth was far from innocent.
Dylan’s fingers stiffened against her back, and ever so slightly, he urged her closer to him. He stood there so tall and somber, solid. She could feel strength emitting from him, just as she could detect the scent of sandalwood mingling with that of pine. The urge to lean closer, to sink against his side and feel his arm curl around her, hold her, made her stand straighter.
On the other side of the casket, Detective Zito stood next to Yvonne Kelly, while Janine, the grim-faced D.A., and other members of his staff stood clustered together. The irony didn’t escape Beth, the divide between her and the prosecutor’s office. If charges were filed, she’d face Lance’s colleagues across another divide, that of a courtroom.
“Lance St. Croix will be deeply missed,” the minister concluded, giving way to the sound of “Taps” filling the cemetery. The effect was peaceful in a haunting way, the high-pitched wail drifting among the pines, the wind rustling a patch of wildflowers.
Beth drew a distracting sandalwood-laden breath and watched Janine crying. She envied her friend that ability, that free display of emotion. She wanted to cry. To yell. To throw something. But she’d sewn everything up so tight she wondered if even a knife could cut through the stitches.
Beneath the glare of the sun, the truth grew hotter, more punishing. And the cemetery started to spin.
* * *
Dylan felt Bethany sway and pulled her closer to his side. She looked disturbingly pale, her eyes too dark against skin that looked like porcelain. The wind whipped long sable hair around her face, obscuring and hiding, making him itch to loosen the strands clinging to her dry lips. Normally, black became her, but the suit he’d picked out looked too stark, too big. The tailored jacket practically
hung off her shoulders. He
would have sworn she’d lost five pounds in four days.
Alarm shot through him. Clearly she wasn’t eating, and the shadows beneath her eyes told him she hadn’t slept much, either. Why? What did she see in the darkness that disturbed her so? What did she remember? What did she fear?
Stop it, he admonished himself. Stop it. He didn’t want to think about the toll the past several days had taken on her. He couldn’t think of her as one of the underdogs he made a career of championing. Bethany Rae Kincaid was nobody’s underdog. She made her own choices, her own beds.
But still, the urge to pull her to his side, to slip his arm around the curve of her waist, almost undid him.
The spectacle raced on around them, the pomp and posturing and celebrity his family thrived upon. His grandfather had public grieving down to an art form.
Against the palm of his hand, he felt Bethany’s breathing change, grow more shallow. He looked down to see her gaze fixated on a lone pine beyond the crowd of mourners. Her pupils were huge, dilated.
“Bethany?” he asked, leaning closer. “You okay?”
She glanced up, her eyes blinking too rapidly. “D-Dylan?”
Her voice was strained, raspy, as though she’d been running, not standing completely still. Maybe that was it. She’d been standing too straight, the sun glaring too hot.
“Don’t lock your knees,” he whispered.
Beth gazed up at Dylan. He stood out from the crowd of mourners, a tall man in a black suit, eyes as dark and fierce as a primeval forest. She remembered thinking that before, couldn’t quite recall when. Those eyes were narrow now, focused on her. And his mouth, she saw those distractingly full lips moving, heard the low rumble of his voice, but the never-ending trumpet drowned out the words. Spots clouded her vision. She blinked, but the dis
tortion grew. She tried to draw in that dangerously sooth
ing aroma of sandalwood, but found herself gasping instead.
Lance.
The darkness.
The blood.
The screams.
Dylan.
Her knees buckled.
It was a hell of a time for the past four days to catch up with her.
From that hazy, faraway place she’d inhabited since Lance’s death, she saw Dylan reaching for her, but then the world again went black, and she saw nothing at all.
Chapter 5
D
ylan saw everything. He saw her eyes go blank and her pale mouth go slack. He saw her lift a hand, saw it fall back to her side. He saw her body go limp. “Bethany!”
She slumped against him and would have melted to the ground had his hand not been at her back. He slid his arm around her waist like he’d wanted to all along, and held her to his side.
She didn’t protest, didn’t move.
The trumpet stopped. A collective gasp rose from the mourners as they turned to stare at the inert woman in his arms.
Only then did he realize he’d roared her name, rather than the whisper he’d thought.
“What happened?” her mother asked, rushing over. “Is she okay?”
He eased Bethany to the crisp grass and kneeled beside her, resting her head in his lap. She didn’t move. She just lay there, still save for her chest rising and falling with each shallow breath. Strands of sable hair fanned over her face, prompting him to lift a hand to smooth them back. He didn’t have time to steel himself. He didn’t have time to fight off the memories that immediately clobbered him.
And he hurt.
His heart started to pound, so hard, the echoes reverberated through the heavy silence. Nine years dissolved into nothing. Bethany may have cut his heart out, but she hadn’t escaped without scars. And where there were scars, there was pain.
The pale, jagged line running down the right side of her face bore silent testimony to that.
Something inside him started to break. Damn it, he
hadn’t known.
“She’s exhausted,” he told her mother, skimming a finger along Bethany’s cheekbone. Her eyes were closed, her
features relaxed, her skin pale aside from the shadows. She felt sinuous in his arms, liquid, not tense and on guard like
she’d been for the past several days. Years. Nine.
“She’s too warm,” he gritted out, going to work on the buttons of the black blazer. Guilt stabbed deep. He’d
bought the long-sleeved, long-skirted outfit for her, selecting a tailored style like she preferred.
He hadn’t thought about the sun and the humidity, the heat.
“Bethany Rae?” Sierra went down on her knees and took her daughter’s hand. “Can you hear me, sweet thing?”
She didn’t move, didn’t stir.
“Give her a minute.” Dylan eased back her jacket, exposing the soft swell of her chest. She wore no jewelry around her neck, just a few fading bruises that made his blood run cold. He didn’t open the jacket further, was in no frame of mind to see the black lace bra he’d purchased for her. “Let her cool off.”
“What the hell is wrong with her?” barked his grandfather, who’d rolled his wheelchair closer. “Hasn’t she
made enough trouble as it is? Doesn’t she know this is a funeral?”
Dylan cut him a sharp look. “I’m quite sure she didn’t mean to offend you, Grandfather.”
The older man snorted. “She should have thought of that before she killed my grandson.”
Dylan just stared. He wanted to push to his feet and steer his grandfather beneath a cluster of pines, make it clear this was neither the time nor the place. And he would have, too. He didn’t give a damn about Yvonne Kelly and her cohorts gathered like vultures just beyond the trees, the swarm of friends and family and political allies. It would serve them right, give them something to talk about for months to come. Years.
The thought almost made him grin. Almost.
But Bethany lay unmoving in his arms, his cousin lay dead in that shiny coffin, and everything he’d ever believed was tearing at the seams. “The facts aren’t all in yet, Grandfather.”
“Are you defending her?”
“I’m stating the law.”
His grandfather eyed him a long moment, the St. Croix eyes he’d shared with the grandson he’d never understood on fire. “She’s not one of your lost causes,” he warned, then turned and wheeled toward the minister.
Dylan returned his attention to the woman sprawled in his lap. The sun glared hotter, the cooling breeze suddenly gone. He’d feared it was only a matter of time before the past few days toppled her. He just hadn’t expected the crush to be literal, and he hadn’t expected the fall to be at the funeral.
But he was glad he’d been there to catch her.
“Bethany, sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Her eyelids fluttered, and she shifted, her shoulders moving against his thighs, her face coming to rest against his waist. A soft little wisp of a sound eased past her dry lips.
“Should I call an ambulance?” Janine White asked.
“Not yet,” Dylan said, not even sparing a glance for the woman Lance had tried to set him up with. Dylan had taken her out a time or two, but fresh from a nasty divorce, she’d carried more baggage than he cared to explore. He’d steered clear of her bed, an insult she’d never forgotten. “Just clear everyone back and give us some breathing room.”
Bethany shifted again, forcing Dylan to bite back a groan. And a curse. What kind of man was aware of a woman sliding against his groin when she was completely out of it?
“Bethany?” he asked, and slowly those long lashes lifted, revealing the cloudy blue of her eyes.
“D-Dylan?”
Something inside him loosened. “I’ve got you.”
“W-what happened?”
“You fainted.”
Abruptly, the color returned to her cheeks, the wariness to her gaze. She struggled to sit.
Dylan helped her out of his lap. “Take it easy, sweetheart. Just breathe nice and deep for me.”
She glanced to her left, where the casket remained perched over a gaping hole, where Janine had herded many of the mourners. Zito and Yvonne Kelly watched with near rabid interest, while others milled about.
“Oh, God,” Bethany whispered, and he saw the second awareness hit. She was one of those rare women who hated drawing attention to herself, unlike her mother, who did everything humanly imaginable to gobble up the spotlight, no matter who she humiliated or hurt in the process.
Once, Bethany had told him she dreaded her own wedding, because everyone would stare at her. To this day, Dylan had never been able to forget the sight of her walking down the aisle, toward Lance. Everything inside him had systematically shut down, leaving only a concern as raw and elemental as the concern he felt right now. She’d been so pale. Mechanical, almost. Much like the evening in the mountains, when she’d realized they were stranded. Together.
“It’s okay,” he told her, brushing the back of his hand against the side of her face. “You’ve been through a tough couple of days. Everyone understands.”
She gazed up at him. “I don’t.”
The moment of pure honesty stabbed deep. “How do you feel? Dizzy?”
She drew a hand to her stomach. “A little.”
Dylan stared at her pale, fine-boned fingers pressed against the stark black suit, and a bad feeling twisted through him. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” She frowned. “There’s no need for that.”
“Humor me.” He stood and reached for her. “Can you stand, or do you need me to carry you?”
The wind whipped at her long brown hair, sending it into a frenzy around the soft lines of her face. Her fingers tightened against his palm. And just like he’d known she would, she stood.
“I can walk on my own,” she said, but swayed.
“Of course you can,” he murmured, but kept his hand at the small of her back as he led her to his Bronco.
She didn’t swat it away.
* * *
Beth sat on the small hospital bed, arms in her lap, bare feet dangling. She no longer wore the gorgeous black suit Dylan had picked out for her, but rather, a formless hospital gown. The light blue cotton hung from her shoulders, extending down above her knees. Thank God panty hose no longer encased her legs. That’s why she’d fainted, she told herself. Because of the sheer silk constricting the lower half of her body, while the sun beat down on her. She hadn’t been able to breathe.
That was all. That was why.
But classic no-holds-barred Dylan, he refused to accept the easy answer. He’d barely said a word on the way to the hospital, just looked straight ahead, his fingers curled too tight around the steering wheel. He hadn’t turned on the jazz he preferred, hadn’t drank from the bottle of water in his cup holder.
And now, standing across the small cubicle in his black suit, he looked to be bracing himself.
In almost any other circumstance, with any other man, Beth would have laughed. Dylan St. Croix didn’t flinch when he
investigated the
dirty dealings of a prominent congressman or brought down a well-respected import/export company. Threats of bodily harm didn’t faze the man. But escorting a woman who’d fainted to a hospital totally undid him.
“I really am fine,” she told him. “There’s no reason to hang around.” In fact, she’d prefer him to leave. Then she might be able to breathe. As it was, his tall form made the cubicle feel like a shoebox.
“When the doctor says you’re fine, I’ll leave. Until then, we wait.”
She glanced at the small table beside the bed, where
medical instruments sat helter-skelter. The nurse had checked her pulse and her heart rate, taken her temperature, felt
her glands, even drawn blood and collected urine. Through it all, Beth had insisted she was fine. Just tired. Under a lot of stress. That’s why she hadn’t been eating right, why the thought of food turned her stomach.
But, of course, no one listened to her.
“Why?” she asked.
Dylan’s gaze met hers. “Why what?”
“Why won’t you leave?” And God help her, why did the sight of him leaning against the wall make time fall away?
He glanced out beyond the cubicle. “Would you rather I send in Detective Zito or your mother?”
She sat up a little straighter. “No.” At least Dylan for the most part was leaving her alone, not grilling her with questions or smothering her with melodrama.
“How bad was it?” she asked. “When I fainted? Mom didn’t make a scene, did she?”
A strange light glinted in Dylan’s eyes. It almost looked like amusement. “Not too bad.”
Beth drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I wish I could believe that.” But couldn’t. She knew her mother too well. Sierra Winston—no, make that Landaiche—lived for the spotlight. She thrived on it. Craved it. A small town southern girl, she’d gone west to make a name for herself in Hollywood, but through marriage had ended up in Portland instead. Her acting talents being what they were, or rather, weren’t, she’d stayed in Oregon, and made a name for herself in other ways, trading one man for another, each more exciting than the last. Often younger, too.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she reminded Dylan. There was something dark and disturbing in his gaze, a jagged emotion she neither recognized nor understood. “Why are you here?”
“I bought the suit.”
She glanced at the folded skirt and jacket sitting on a chair, the bra and panties beneath, the hose in the garbage can. Putting the garments on that morning had felt uncomfortably intimate, as though in letting the fabric Dylan had picked out slide against her body, the man himself was touching her.
“You think that’s why I fainted?”
“I don’t know why you fainted. That’s why we’re here.”
Frustration pushed closer. Harder. She no more understood Dylan St. Croix now than she had nine years before. Whereas Lance had been predictable, trying to predict Dylan, or understand his motivation, was like chasing earthquakes.
With the exception of that one ill-fated night, for nine years he’d acted like she no longer existed in his world, and she’d done the same. But now he would barely let her out of his sight. She understood his presence at the house the night of Lance’s death—blood bound the two men, and even though Lance had complained about Dylan’s muckraking, an odd kinship linked the cousins. That’s why Dylan had stood up for Lance at the wedding.
The memory scraped. Lance with his sandy hair neatly combed, his blue eyes glowing, his hands behind his back. Smiling. Dylan with his dark hair cut brutally short, his green eyes burning, his hands balled into tight fists, his body rigid. He’d looked more like a man facing a firing squad than a man waiting for his cousin’s bride.
Now Lance was dead. Murdered, she amended, lowering her head to her hands. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t scrape away the cold horror of it all. Couldn’t chase away the ice in her blood. It was like someone had taken a knife and carved every second of that afternoon into the core of who she was.
“Bethany?”
Dylan’s voice was sharp, concerned, prompting her to look up abruptly. “It’s never going to go away, is it?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Give it time. Eventually everything fades.”
But that wasn’t true and Beth knew it. Everything didn’t fade. Some things just changed forms, twisted and contorted, slipping into different corners of your soul. But they were always, always there.
Just like Dylan since this whole ordeal had begun. Why? she wondered. Because of his penchant for diving into mysteries and shredding secrets? Because of family loyalty? Because he wanted to be there when she fell?