CROSSFIRE (29 page)

Nicholas's eyes went colder than ice. "
Monroe
."

Elizabeth
stood between the two of them, heart racing, throat burning and raw. They'd never come face-to-face that she knew of, but from the way Nicholas stared at Wesley, he knew good and well who he was.

"Good God, Elizabeth. Are you out of your mind?"

"Nicky—" Regret pierced deep. He'd been good to her over the years, kind. She didn't feel love for him, but she'd never wanted to hurt him. "I'm sorry."

Hawk came up beside her. "Ellie, honey, go upstairs."

"You sorry son of a bitch!" Nicholas roared. He launched himself against Hawk, driving him into the wall. "You just couldn't keep your hands off her, could you?"

Hawk shoved Nicholas away. "That's enough, Ferreday."

"That's right," Nicholas taunted. "You'd like it if I shut up, wouldn't you? She doesn't know, does she? You haven't told her. That's why you asked her to go upstairs, so she can't hear what I have to say."

Midmorning sunshine poured through the windows, but a blast of cold shot through
Elizabeth
. She stared at these two men she thought she knew, the one she'd once wanted to marry and the man she'd made love to countless times during the night. Now they both appeared strangers.

"Stop it!" she demanded. "Stop it right now."

Nicholas squared his shoulders, didn't look away from Hawk. "How long were you going to screw her before you let me know? How long before you rubbed it in my face?"

"You don't have a damn clue what you're talking about," Wesley bit out.

"Don't I?" Nicholas laughed. "Is this supposed to punish me somehow? Is this your twisted little plan for revenge?"

Elizabeth
went horribly, brutally still. She stared at the hatred twisting Nicholas's features, the contempt hardening Wesley's, and knew. God help her, she knew.

"Revenge?" The word sliced deep.

"That's right," Nicholas said, twisting to her. "I always wondered why I never got a chance to meet the mighty Hawk Monroe, savior of the Carrington family, why someone so bold and protective was never around when I was." He shot Wesley a look of scorching contempt, then stepped toward
Elizabeth
and lifted his hand to her face. "Didn't you ever think that was odd?"

His touch crawled through her, vile somehow, poisonous.

Chin high, she pulled his wrist away and stepped back.
"No."

He laughed, not softly like the Nicholas of her youth, but disgusted, guttural. "Because you knew you were slumming," he snarled. "But I bet even you didn't know how low you'd sunk, that you'd crawled into bed with a man who only wanted to take what was mine."

Whatever control Wesley had been exerting shattered. He was across the foyer in a heartbeat, slamming Nicholas against a framed magnolia print hanging on the wall. "That's a bald-faced lie, and you know it."

Nicholas stared beyond him, never looking away from
Elizabeth
. "Did he tell you about his mother? That she was my father's whore? Did he tell you that?"

Wesley's body gathered force. "Shut the f—"

"That he used to stand outside the windows of my house," Nicholas rolled right on, "and stare inside, watch his mother serving my father, watch his mother taking care of me and my sister? Did he tell you that?"

Elizabeth
staggered back, reached for a small table. "Wesley?"

His back went rigid but he said nothing, just stood there with the front of Nicholas's shirt bunched in his hands, looking like a soldier who'd been caught behind enemy lines.

"He had my father and sister fooled, but not me. I kicked him out like the trash he was, before he spoiled my family any further." Nicholas's mouth curled into a snarl. "He promised he'd pay me back one day, make me pay."

Disbelief surged. Horror stabbed deep, cutting through the layers of hope and promise, through the dreams, the fantasies she'd allowed herself to believe. She tried to breathe, to think, but her heart just kept screaming, screaming.

"You were nothing but a pawn," Nicholas said. "Part of his twisted little plan to pay me back."

The pieces slammed into place, the fragments of his past he'd revealed in the mountains, how easily they fit the bits Nicholas added, forming a picture she didn't want to see.

"I can see this is a surprise," Nicholas said. "I'll leave the two of you to work it out." Smiling now, looking pleased with himself, he shoved past an obscenely still Wesley and whistled his way out the door, leaving the two of them alone.

"Wesley," she said, and her voice, her heart, broke on his name. She wanted him to spin to her and tell her Nicholas was lying, better, to shake her awake and tell her this was all a nightmare, that she hadn't been nothing to him but a pawn, part of a sick plan to pay Nicholas back for ruining his life.

Slowly, he turned toward her, and she knew. He didn't have to say a word, didn't have to move a muscle, because it was all there on his face, the anger, the shame, the disgust, all glittering in eyes suddenly cold.

For a moment they just stared at each other, the truth, the lies splattered on the floors and the walls, seeping between them like the aftermath of a grisly crime.

Just the night before, she'd taken this man into her body. He'd penetrated her heart long before. She wanted to believe that Nicholas was wrong, but the way Hawk just looked at her, the way he uttered not one word in his own defense, drove home the shattering reality that all along, all the heat between them, the challenge, the sweet surrender, had been nothing but a means to an end, a way of fulfilling an ulterior motive that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with revenge.

Everything inside her went insidiously cold. He'd never made her a promise. Never talked of tomorrow. Never told her he loved her.

She swallowed hard, commanded herself to be strong. "Say something."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Tell me he's lying," she said with a desperateness she hated. It snaked through her chest, curling around her heart like a vise. Squeezing. Hard. "Tell me he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about."

Something flashed in Wesley's eyes, something hot and hard and violent. He looked as if he wanted to tear someone apart with his bare hands. He muttered something under his breath and pushed away from the wall, not toward her, but toward the coffee table, where his mobile phone waited. Furiously he jabbed a series of numbers.

"Aaron," he bit out. "Get over here now." He dropped the phone and turned to her, and with that rough-hewn voice of his, the one that had haunted her dreams for two long years, he crushed far more than velvet. "I can't tell you anything you don't already know."

* * *

Plan.
The word echoed insidiously. Reality sliced deep.
Elizabeth
stared out her bedroom window but barely saw the blue sky and white puffy clouds, the softly shimmying leaves of the maple which had shaded her town home for over half a century. All this time Hawk had teased her about her plans, challenged her to break free, take a chance, walk outside the lines. All this time he'd insisted plans were for cowards. That the brave took life as it came.

All this time he'd lied.

There's no such thing as a perfect plan, Ellie. There's always a weak spot, a vulnerability.

His words, uttered two years before, stung. He'd been wrong, she thought bitterly. There was such a thing as a perfect plan, but it wasn't hers. It had been his.

The truth decimated a place deep inside, the place where dreams had dwelled, the place that had convinced her to trust the draw she felt for Wesley. For the first time in her life romantic notions had overshadowed all she believed about survival.

She couldn't believe how blind she'd been.

She'd believed him, damn it. More than believed him, she'd trusted the promise she'd imagined glowing in his eyes, felt in his touch. She'd trusted, and she'd wanted.

"Liz'beth?"

She spun toward her bedroom door, where Miranda stood like a breath of funky, fresh air. She wore a simple rose-colored T-shirt, her low-rise jeans hugging her hips. Embroidered dragonflies adorned the denim around her ankles.

"Hey, Mira," she said, swiping furiously beneath her eyes. "I didn't know you were here."

"Aaron let me in, said you were up here."

"Ah." From downstairs she heard the accented rumble of Sandro's voice. "What's up?"

Miranda strolled into the room. "That's a darn good question," she said, surveying the elegant bed, normally tidy with a few scatter pillows tossed about, now nothing but a tangle of sheets and shredded memories. Eyes dancing, Miranda shot her sister a knowing smile. "Got a little rambunctious, did we?"

The question, teasing, light, pure Miranda, punctured the thin veil of control she'd been holding in place. "This isn't a good time—"

Miranda never let her finish. She zoomed across the room and took
Elizabeth
's hands, enveloped them with warmth. "
Elizabeth
? My God, honey, what's wrong? Your hands are like ice."

Elizabeth
hesitated only a second before going into her sister's arms. After Kristina had died, she'd tried to take on the role of older sister, tried to be a role model for Miranda, a source of strength and guidance. But deep inside, the second daughter still lived, the middle child, the girl who'd thought her older sister perfect, who'd secretly envied her younger sister the freedom she'd always had, who'd tried to bring peace to the family. But she had no peace now, only a gaping, festering wound, and for the first time in eleven years, the charade, the facade, crumbled.

"A mistake," she managed through the emotion swamping her. "I made a mistake."

Miranda pulled back and looked at her through eyes drenched in the kind of love only a sister could give. "Hawk?" she whispered. "Is that why he's not here?"

Elizabeth
swallowed hard. "He won't be back, either." At least she hoped not. She didn't know how she could look at him again, at those hot burning eyes, without remembering what it had been like between them, the dreams she'd just started to believe.

He'd stayed until Aaron arrived, a soldier down to the last, doing his job but not looking at her, not explaining, not acting as though he so much as gave a damn that the jig was up.

I don't do hearts, sweet thing. I'm more of a body man.

But she'd given him both, God help her.

She'd given him both.

* * *

"I love you, too, Mom. Hope you're feeling better soon."
Elizabeth
hung up the phone and fought back a wave of emotion. She was a grown woman, but she still missed her mother, the woman who could enforce her will with the simple arch of an eyebrow, mend a broken heart with a hug. Well, maybe not mend, but certainly soothe.

From downstairs, the double beep of the security system told her Aaron had returned from a quick perimeter check. She reached for her favorite running shoes and pulled them on, wondered what it would take to convince him a quick run in the park wouldn't hurt anything. She needed to get away from memories that lurked everywhere she turned. Twice she'd gone to make her bed but recoiled the second her hands touched the sheets.

I saw
you,
damn it! Your life, not mine.

The memory knifed deep. Confusion lacerated. Nothing made sense. The images wouldn't leave her alone, the man who'd stood with her in the cold Calgary rain, beside himself because he thought she'd been hurt; the man who'd gently and patiently extracted the truth about Kristina's death from her, like poison from a snakebite; the man who'd charged into her bedroom following the attack, with deadly intention burning in his eyes; the man who'd drawn her into his arms just the night before, who'd admitted that he'd seen her life flash before his eyes, not his own.

The man who'd refused to defend himself, who'd just turned and walked away.

"I can't tell you anything you don't already know."

Her throat tightened. More images, farther back. The boy who'd grown up without a father, whose mother had worked as a domestic servant in the Ferreday household, who'd earned Steven's love, only to lose his mentor to an accident. The eighteen-year-old who'd joined the Army to put himself through school. The bodyguard who'd forced her to see truths that violated everything she'd taught herself to think, believe, want.

The lover who rocked her world.

The man she'd cowardly turned her back on.

The rhythm of her breath changed, grew more shallow. The truth pierced with the precision of a needle to the heart.

"
Elizabeth
."

She blinked, turned toward the hallway. First she saw the man, his smile, then she saw the gun.

Then it was too late.

* * *

The sun blasted down from an obscenely blue sky. A few lazy clouds drifted as if they hadn't a worry in the world. Thick, sticky air warned of rain.