Unnatural Relations (Lust and Lies Series, Book 1) (35 page)

His smile faded as he realized she was upset rather than happy with him. "I wanted to please you."

"Maybe, but that's not what it feels like to me. I feel like I've been very expertly pushed—no,
seduced
—into agreeing to marry you. Why is that, Kyle? Why are you in such a hurry for me to say yes?"

A muscle in his cheek twitched, and he pulled himself up beside her. "I love you too much to be patient."

She took a slow breath as she felt her heart freezing up in her chest. "You were right. It does sound corny when it's a lie. Just like the wrong number in the middle of the night. And Hannibal. Funny thing about that. Russ said your name was Hamilton. Naturally, I assumed he was lying, since I thought he meant your last name."

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "I can explain everything. I was going to as soon as I was sure—"

Awareness that he really was hiding something slammed into Barbara like a punch in the stomach.
"When you were sure of
what
? A legal commitment? Or... oh, my God... after you adopted Matthew? Did Decker hire you to—"

"Nobody hired me!" He grasped her shoulders to stop her from rising. "I know it looks bad, but it's not. It started out as repayment of a debt, but, as crazy as it sounds, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. If I'd told you the truth up front, you would never have given me ten minutes of your time. Then one lie led to another—"

"Shut up.
I don't want to know what lies you told me. I don't really want to hear why you did any of what you did." She pulled away from him and scrambled for her clothes. "Barbara, please, let me explain."

"No." She stepped into her dress and shoes and stuffed her underwear and stockings in her purse, but Kyle reached the door before she did. "Let me by or I will scream so loud the police in the next county will hear me."

"No matter how angry you are right now, I can't let you walk out of here like this. Your dress isn't even zippered. Were you planning to hitchhike home half naked?"

"I'll get a cab."

"Maybe. In an hour or so. Or you can be rational, finish getting dressed and I'll drive you home. What if Matt's waiting up? Do you want him to see you looking like you just rolled out of bed? Or worse, that you were raped again?"

She glared at him. "I was, wasn't I?"

"How we feel about each other is not a lie! I've never had to force myself on you."

She didn't like it, but letting him drive her home was more reasonable than what she was about to do. Without verbally agreeing, she went into the bathroom to straighten her hair and finish dressing.

"Let me get your zipper," Kyle said quietly, coming up behind her.

She stepped away from him with a snarl on her face. "Don't you
ever
touch me again." He looked crushed, but he backed away. Less than ten minutes later, they were in his car driving back to Barbara's house.

"My real name is Hamilton Kyle Treadwell."

"If you insist on talking, I'm getting out." She tried to open her door, but he instantly locked it again from his side.

"You're not that stupid, Barbara. Nor do I believe that you're so secure that you don't need to know why I appeared in your life when I did." He paused, but she gave him no encouragement. She just stared out the side window.

"I thought you'd recognize the name. That's why I didn't use it when we met. I needed to get to know you without your knowing who I was. I once suggested you tell me your story by starting at the beginning. So I guess that advice holds here too." He took a delaying breath. "I'm Howard's cousin."

Barbara's head jerked toward him automatically, but she stopped herself from expressing her shock aloud. As she looked away again, he continued.

"I figured he would have told you about me."

"The Three Musketeers," she murmured.

"Howard, Russ and I were inseparable when we were growing up, but after I left for college we only got together on holidays. I was working in Chicago when you and Howard met, and since our parents didn't communicate with each other, I didn't find out about you until Howard came back from Europe. Aunt Edith was so upset about Howard's drinking, she lowered herself to invite me to the estate for Christmas.

"I stayed for a week. I'm sure you can imagine the picture my aunt and uncle painted of you, but Howard never had a bad thing to say. No matter what they told him you'd done, he would have forgiven you, but he believed you had chosen Russ over him... because he wasn't man enough for you."

Barbara closed her eyes against the remembered pain.

"Naturally, it never entered his mind that his parents and their attorney had fabricated everything, as we now know they did. My parents, on the other hand, had told me enough stories about the Hamiltons' cutthroat ways of controlling people and events that I wondered if you were really as horrid as they claimed.

"It didn't really matter to me one way or the other. I just wanted to help Howard forget about you and clean up his act."

He inhaled deeply and when he spoke, his voice was strained with emotion. "We went to a party New Year's Eve. He got so drunk he could barely crawl to his car, but he fought with me over the keys. I was afraid he'd get us both killed, so I drove. How's that for irony?"

Barbara's eyes opened wide.
"You
were driving the car the night Howard was killed?"

"Most of the details were kept out of the media, but I thought you might have known that much. I had only had one glass of champagne earlier that evening, but the roads were covered with ice. I swerved to avoid an oncoming truck and lost control. The car went off an embankment and rolled over. We were trapped inside for a couple hours, both hurt, but Howard... was cut up really bad. He... he bled to death in front of me... and..." He took a shaky breath. "I had to watch him die, Barbara. I couldn't do a thing to help."

The tears in his voice caused her own eyes to water, but she was determined not to care about anything he had to say.

Several seconds passed before he spoke again. "Before he died, he made me promise to do something for him. He asked me to find you, tell you he never stopped loving you and to make sure you were happy. If you needed anything... anything at all... I swore I would provide it for you. When I look back on it now, I think he had something like a vision about you needing help."

The tears flowed down her cheeks, but she refused to turn to him.

"I was pretty messed up for a while after he died, both physically and mentally. Suffice it to say, I was so crazed with guilt, I did some pretty self-destructive things. I even spent some time in jail. What saved me was remembering the promise I'd made. The problem was, when I finally got around to looking for you, you'd disappeared. Twice, an investigator I hired tracked you down, but by the time I went to visit you, you'd taken off again. Through the investigator I learned you had a son, but I had no way of knowing if the child was Howard's or Russ's."

A huff of annoyance came out before she could stop it.

"Regardless of what an angel Howard thought you were, remember I didn't know which story was closest to the truth. I loved Howard like a brother and intended to keep my promise to him if I could, but I also wanted to judge for myself whether you deserved his devotion."

"The picture in the paper was the first clue to your whereabouts that I'd had in years. Between the photos my investigators had taken and how much Matt now looks like Howard, I was almost positive about who you were, and then the investigator confirmed your new identity. I found out where you worked and—"

"And had me
mugged?"

"No! I had this neat little plan worked out to bump into you at the bank. I just lucked into the mugging, I swear."

She turned away again.

Kyle banged his fist on the steering wheel. "Damn it, Barbara! Give me a little understanding here. What else could I do? Walk up to you and say, 'Hi. I'm Howard Hamilton's cousin. You know, the one that killed him. Are you an angel like he said, in which case I'll grant any wish you have, or are you really a two-bit, gold-digging whore like his father said you were?' And if you were what his father claimed, isn't it conceivable that you would lie to see what you could get out of me? I couldn't think of any other way to judge you fairly except to pretend that I was someone else."

"And you couldn't possibly judge me
fairly
unless you first fucked my brains out, right?"

He didn't say another word until he stopped at a red light. Shifting toward her, he stroked her cheek and she instantly slapped his hand away.

"I told you not to touch me."

He withdrew his hand and gripped the steering wheel with tense fingers. "Falling in love with you at first sight was the last thing I could have anticipated. But after hearing how it happened to Howard with you, I didn't stay surprised for long. He and I used to be alike in so many ways. I kept ordering myself to tell you the truth, but the more I learned about you, the more I realized how many reasons you'd have to hate me. Instead of getting easier, it just kept getting more complicated.

"I know how stupid this is going to sound. But I convinced myself that if you loved me enough to marry me, you'd have to forgive me for all the lies. I was hoping I could tell you everything tonight."

He pulled into her driveway and turned off the car, but didn't unlock her door.

"Let me out." Her voice was calm, not at all the way she felt.

"Ask me anything and I'll explain it. The call last night—"

"Don't bother. I wouldn't know if it was the truth or not. I can't seem to tell the difference. Now unlock the door and get out of my life."

He released the lock, but got out as quickly as she did and hurried to intercept her. Despite her order to the contrary, he grasped her arms. "I don't know how to fix the mess I've made, but I need to. If you don't believe what I just said, what
do
you believe? Why in God's name would I have gone through such a masquerade?"

She tilted her head back and met his gaze. "For the money, of course. Marry me, adopt Matthew and cut yourself in on the Hamiltons' millions."

His mouth opened, then widened into a smile. "If that's the main reason you won't believe me, it won't hold up. My family has more money than they do!"

"That's ridiculous," she said, and pushed him out of her way so she could continue walking to her door. "No one has more money than—" Two terrifyingly loud explosions made her whirl back around.

A truck was speeding down the street.

Kyle fell to his knees, put his hand over his left shoulder, then stared in bewilderment at the dark stain on his palm. "I think I've been shot."

* * *

Russ lifted his foot off the accelerator and slowed Pop's truck down to the speed limit despite the adrenaline pumping through his body, demanding that he keep flying.

Talk about luck! He'd driven straight to Barbara's from the expressway, saw Tammy's car in the driveway and stopped to look around. It only took a few seconds of listening at the window to determine that Barbara was out with Ham.

It was too perfect an opportunity to pass up. He simply had to wait for the lovebirds to return to enact the
random
drive-by shooting.

From what he had witnessed, they seemed to be having quite an argument—another bit of luck for him.

Unfortunately, he would have to wait to hear tomorrow's news to learn whether or not it had truly been a successful night. He saw Ham go down, but had either of the bullets finished him off?

* * *

"Is it really necessary to have a police car parked in front of the house? Wasn't it enough that you grounded Matt and me?"

"Humor me," Dani said with an understanding smile. "A detective in an unmarked car will replace that one by this evening and your neighbors will quit talking about you. As far as you staying home today, until I'm convinced that last night's shooting was a random drive-by, I'm assuming the two of you are in serious danger and we can protect you better if you stay put."

"You think it was Russ, don't you?"

"Ninety-nine percent sure, based on my intuition, but I have yet to confirm that he was even in the area last night. None of the motel people called me, but he could have slipped in unnoticed. I'll be spending most of today contacting them again, plus I put out a BOLO on him and his car. That's an advisory for police to be on the lookout. If he's back, we'll find him. In the meantime, you and Matt can put up with a few restrictions."

"What about Simon Decker?"

"He's the other one percent, not that I can picture him pulling the trigger. Hiring a hit man would be more his style, I'd think, but then, from what you've told me, there's a possibility that Russ Latham could be the man he'd hire. At any rate, I had a conversation with Decker this morning. He behaved properly shocked and upset. He can't prove he was in his hotel room all night, but we can't prove otherwise. We're keeping a loose watch on him just in case."

Dani scrutinized Barbara's face. "Try to take a nap this afternoon. You look like you were the one shot instead of him."

Barbara smirked at her. "For some strange reason, I had a little trouble sleeping after everyone left the party."