Her Forgotten Betrayal (15 page)

“What happened?” he asked.

“You…alerted them that I was there. This time,
you
were the reason I was caught. You were so angry. Hostile. You told me I had to know who the shooter was, and I had to find out what was going on. You said I had no choice, even if I had to die to give you the information. Seeing who was there was all you wanted. Not me. It was never about me at all. We couldn’t be together unless I did what you wanted.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” He wasn’t lying. He’d kill with his bare hands before he’d let anyone get to her.

She inhaled, shuddering. She looked miserable, huddling naked in the shadows, facing her demons on her own, even though he was an arm’s length away.

“You’re lying to me now,” she said. “About something else, even if I don’t know what it is. I’ve felt something between us since you showed up yesterday. It’s not just the barn. Or Sebastian. And a part of me doesn’t care. I want you anyway, Cole. I want us. I want this thing we seem to have together, and the past we shared, or I wouldn’t have slept with you. Every instinct is telling me that together we’d be so much better, more real, than the life I’ve lived since you left. That nothing else has felt this perfect. And you want me, too. I believe that. I want to believe that’s why you were in my dream. But you’re still lying to me, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t the man who hurt you, was I? In your dream?”

“No, but you didn’t stop him. You wanted him to find me, even if it meant I would die. That must be what a part of me thinks. And I’m trying to listen to my instincts now, even when they make me sound bat-shit crazy. Tell me what that means. What are you keeping from me?”

He waited, afraid to move, to speak. Her subconscious was working out the truth in leaps and bounds. Which technically meant he’d been right when he’d talked Dawson into letting him stay. His being there less than twenty-four hours had already helped Shaw’s mind grow infinitely stronger. If he could formally debrief this last dream, they’d likely discover more than the Bureau’s investigators had garnered in any of their interviews.

But once he’d told her he was an agent himself, in the state she was in now, what were his chances of convincing her to say anything to him ever again? He had to calm her down first.

“I was in your dream,” he said. “You wanted me there. You want me here with you now.”

She shook her head, backing up the stairs.

“Don’t.” He reached for her, prepared to chase her if he had to. If she got away from him this time, he might never get her back. “Please. Stop running from me.”

“I’m not running from you. I’m running from a man who doesn’t exist. A man you were letting hold a revolver to my head in my dream, ready to watch him blow my brains out.”

Wait. “A revolver? Not a semiautomatic?” She’d never mentioned that before.

“Why do you care? No— I don’t want to hear any more.” She jerked backward, shaking from the same kind of panic attack that she’d suffered in the hospital. “Stay away from me.”

She spun around and started up the stairs.

A creak and an awful crash were the only warning they got.

Before Cole could catch her, Shaw’s leg smashed through the shattered top of the step he’d repaired, and she was pitching forward, her head and undefended body crashing brutally into the stairs.

“God!” He scooped her up and sat on one of the higher steps, pulling her close. “Darlin’, are you hurt?”

He leaned her far enough away to see the goose egg already swelling above her eye.

She tensed against his hold. “Let me go.”

“Like hell.” He stood and guided her around the damage on their way back down the stairs.

“Cole, I mean it.”

“First you’re pissed because I wouldn’t help you when your vivid imagination dreamed me into the middle of your damn shooting. Which, by the way, I
wasn’t
.”

He kicked open the door to the room they’d shared and settled her on the edge of the bed that was still warm from their bodies. He knelt at her feet, snagging his T-shirt and stuffing her into it.

“Now,” he continued, “you’re cranky because I’m sticking to you like glue. Could you calm down long enough to figure out what you want, Shaw, before
my
head explodes?”

His pulse was racing. He was quite possibly going to destroy something with his bare hands if he didn’t get himself under control.

The bastard had booby-trapped that step Cole had just repaired. When he went back to inspect it, he knew he’d find evidence of tampering. Evidence so obvious it would be impossible to miss. Along with the implication that
he
was responsible for Shaw’s latest accident. Hell, all her accidents. Accidents that had begun nearly the precise moment he’d stepped out of his watcher role and installed himself in her life.

“What’s wrong?” She pressed her fingers over his scowl.

The question was so out of context with the angry accusations she’d been tossing around, he couldn’t help but smile. Her eyes were clearing. The dream was finally losing its hold.
Thank God
. She was coming back to him.

“We seem to be in a bit of a mess here, don’t we?” he said.

“We?” She looked skeptical.

“This is a
we
situation from here out, Shaw.”

“Why? I’m a maniac, letting my nightmare do this to me. And I can’t seem to stop it, no matter how hard I try.”

He sighed. How did he make either one of them understand what was happening? There was only one thing he knew for certain. “Because I’m going to make damn sure you’re safe. No matter what. No matter who wants you to doubt me until you’ve completely turned away from my protection.”

The air in the room grew heavy with her suspicions…and everything he wasn’t saying. But she wrapped herself tighter in his shirt instead of bolting for the door again. He pulled the blanket from the bed and sat beside her, curling the soft cotton and his arm around her. He rubbed a hand up and down her arm.

“That broken step wasn’t an accident, was it?” she asked. “Someone is really doing these things to me.”

Needing distance so he could think clearly, Cole stood and slipped into his jeans without bothering with underwear. Zipping them, he grabbed his Glock from the table where he’d left it the night before and slipped the shoulder holster onto his bare back. He leaned a hip against the low bureau across from the bed and rubbed a hand over the beard he hadn’t bothered shaving in days.

“That step was sound, Shaw. I repaired it before joining you in here earlier. Then I locked us in, so nothing else would happen to you unless it came through me first. And nothing did. Not until I let you get away from me again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why would someone be doing this? Why not just shoot me dead the first time? Or get it over with once I was up here unprotected, before you showed up?”

“Whoever it is doesn’t want to get it over with. He’s toying with you, hurting you, but making sure he doesn’t do any real damage. Hell if I know why, but it’s like he’s getting some kind of sick satisfaction out of scaring you. Most likely he also wants to fracture your mind completely so you won’t remember anything at all. And he wants you to believe that I’m the one who’s after you, like in your latest nightmare. Otherwise, why would he have used the broken stair this time? He obviously knew I’d worked on it.”

She shrank into the bedding. She reached for one of the pillows they’d tossed away so they could sleep more comfortably. Her gaze wouldn’t meet his.

“Do you really think it’s me?” he asked. “That I’m trying to kill you?”

She shook her head.

That was something, anyway.

“But you don’t fully trust me.” And he was about to give her an even more powerful reason not to.

She shook her head again. “You’re not telling me everything. I know there’s more to what’s happening in this house, and I think you know what at least some of it is. In the nightmare, you were telling me to remember my shooter, while he was screaming for me to forget. It was like the two of you were after each other, and I was in the middle of a wrestling match or something. I swear, I think I’m losing my mind.”

“No.” Cole pushed himself away from the bureau. Where did he begin? “You’re getting stronger. You’re healing, and the brilliant intuition that’s made you a successful researcher and businesswoman is showing you the truth beneath all the lies closing in on you. I’d say you’re right on target. Don’t stop following your instincts, Shaw. No matter what you learn next. We’re not going to let this nutjob get away with what he’s doing. Are we?”

When she didn’t answer, Cole walked to the door. He shut and locked it again, preparing himself to damage her faith in him even more. Shaw’s gasp spun him around. Horror, shock, filled her expression. Her hand was covering her mouth. He pulled his weapon, senses on alert to whatever new threat had presented itself.

“What is it?” He took a step toward her, checking between himself and the door, then looking back at Shaw.

“You…your back.” She reached for him, tears in her eyes. “Cole…my God. The scars. How badly were you burned?”

His shoulders relaxed. He hooked his service piece into its holster and crouched beside the bed until they were eye-to-eye. The only surprise here was that it had taken her this long to notice.

“They don’t hurt anymore,” he lied.

Sometimes, when his own nightmares grew too real for his sleeping mind to push away, he also relived that night. Then he woke, his entire back throbbing, to the feel of fire searing his skin. It could take days for the psychosomatic pain to fade.

She was on the verge of crying again, her chin trembling the way it had even as a kid when she was being her bravest and no one was allowed to see her hurting.

“Are they really that ugly?” he asked, damning the lingering self-consciousness his question revealed.

She shook her head, her hand reaching tentatively for his shoulder, as if she wanted to soothe his injuries the way he had each of hers. He captured her fingers there, trapping them against his skin.

“It must have been horrible,” she rasped out.

It had been, and what had made it worse was that he’d waited in that awful hospital for her every day, every night, and she’d never come.

“Cole?” she asked, her gaze growing distant again, her mind remembering more. “Tell me again. Everything this time. Tell me exactly how you were burned.”

“You know what happened. You can remember it on your own now. You already have. Most of it.” Her doctors had said that her confidence in her recall would grow, the more of her past she reclaimed herself. She needed that kind of self-assurance now more than ever. “Think about the barn again. Think about us, honey, and why you were so upset in your dream at the thought that I wouldn’t do everything I could to save you this time.”

She laid her hand over his heart, once again the Shaw from their past who’d promised to love him, just like this, forever.

“Fire was everywhere in the nightmare,” she said. “Like in the barn when we were teenagers…when you wouldn’t let me give up. You made me face the fire. You dragged me through it. You carried me out, then you stumbled… Oh my God, Cole. I can see it now. Why didn’t you tell me how badly you were burned because of me?”

Chapter Fourteen

The room shimmered around Shaw.

The past pulsed closer, the speed of its return setting off bells in her mind, in her ears. She closed her eyes, reaching out instead of pulling away. She waited, welcoming the memories of her and Cole that she’d longed for so desperately. She inhaled, held her breath, then let it out. A spark ignited as she did, piercing the void.

Images coalesced in rapid succession, familiar and real. Dizzy, holding onto the man kneeling solid and patient at her feet, she let a wave of who she’d been return. Just one more piece, but maybe the most important piece of all.

She gasped.

All Cole had been to her was there now. What he’d done for her was back, every bit of it, including her role in his exile from High Lake and her devastation after losing him.

“Your back was badly burned in the fire because you wouldn’t leave without me. You and Sebastian…you were fighting. Somehow, the fire started, and I was too afraid to move. You forced me to face the flames, but I balked. So you carried me through them. You got me out. You took me to my father, and he ran you off even though you were terribly hurt. He didn’t even call an ambulance for you.”

“No, my old man actually roused himself enough to take care of that.”

Cole’s lips twisted in a wry grin that might have been fondness on someone else. But he was laughing at himself, Shaw realized. Because he’d always done that to shield his true emotions. So many people had let him down, everyone who was supposed to have loved the little boy he’d been. And instead of hating them all, he’d learned to laugh and shrug off pain as if it couldn’t touch him.

She knew better.

“Then when they found Sebastian’s body…?” she said.

“Your father and the sheriff showed up in my hospital room while the doctors were treating my burns and pumping me full of morphine. They accused me of intentionally setting the fire to get back at Sebastian for his latest perverted pastime—spying on us while we made love.”

Another piece of her brain’s shifting puzzle snapped into place.

“The memory I had in the study. You said it was my brother I was meeting.” She looked up. “I was terrified of him that day. But I can’t remember why.”

“He’d killed your cat.” Cole brought her hand to his mouth for another kiss.

This one, she felt to her soul as she recalled at once the horror of finding her beloved Siamese, Sasha, broken and bloodied, the wrenching shock and sadness of knowing Sebastian had tortured her, and then the gratitude she’d felt toward Cole. He’d kissed away her pain then, too. He’d promised to make her brother pay for his cruelty.

“That was the night before the fire,” Cole went on. “Sebastian and I were brawling by the time your father showed up in his office.”

“And Father threw you out of the house, instead of believing me about the cat.” The confrontation was now replaying in her mind like a fast-forwarding film clip, each image a precious discovery, but each one more horrifying than the last. “Sebastian said you’d pay for beating him to a bloody pulp.”

“And we both knew he meant he’d be coming for you as soon as I wasn’t there.”

“So you snuck into my room that night to watch over me.”

“Well, that wasn’t the only thing I did that night.” Cole’s devilish grin made her heart skip its next downbeat. She remembered that, too. How much she’d loved the unapologetic pleasure he took in her, and the even greater ecstasy of him showing her how to take from him in return. “But I did stick to you like glue, even the next day when you went to the barn to feed your horse.”

“Because we never knew when Sebastian would show up.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember the rest. But all she could see were the flames. “Was he waiting for us?”

“I don’t know.” Cole sounded furious with himself. Personal failure wasn’t something he’d accepted easily, even as a boy. “We made love. It was one of our favorite places. I caught him watching us, and we fought again. I don’t know where the flames came from. The fire spread quickly. One minute we were all in an empty stall and you were trying to get between us to break up the fight, the next we were trapped. I tried to get you to run. But you were paralyzed with fear. I picked you up to carry you away. By then, Sebastian was gone. I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t give a shit. And we didn’t have the time to search for him. All I could focus on was the fire getting closer, and if I didn’t get you out, we were both going to die.”

“So…” She forced her mind to settle, inhaling deeply and letting the breath and the memory out with the same calming flow. “You wrapped me in a horse blanket you ripped from the wall and carried me through the flames, protecting me with your own body.”

“Almost got away clean, too.” He shrugged again. No big deal. He’d simply walked through fire to save her, while she’d cowered in terror. “I stumbled and fell at the barn door. You rolled free. I was on my knees when the flames surged up and caught me. It was only a few seconds—”

“But instead of taking care of your injured back, you picked me up again and carried me all the way home.” The way he’d caught her close, putting himself between her and danger, several times in the last day.

The scars she’d seen were faded. But they had to have caused him agony at the time. He’d endured them, in order to shield her from harm.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

“I’d promised not to leave your side,” he said, clearly remembering how it had all ended.

She was remembering, too. “And you didn’t…not until my father gave you no other choice.”

“When he came to the hospital that day, he said you didn’t want to see me.”

“He wouldn’t let me come to you,” Shaw corrected.

It was the truth. She’d been under virtual house arrest. But she’d been such a coward, too. In shock and traumatized, she’d been too scared to leave her room, regardless of her father’s orders. Her brother was dead, and even though she’d grown to despise him, she’d been devastated. And selfish. She’d been too much of a child to pick herself up the way Cole had or to face her screwed-up world for what it was. And she’d paid the ultimate price for her weakness.

She’d been alone ever since.

Cole’s expression was unreadable. “The sheriff told me you’d given a statement that implicated me in Sebastian’s death.” His jaw clenched as he spoke in the same emotionless tone he’d used when he’d first shown up at the mansion. “That I’d caught your brother spying on us in the barn, and we fought again, and when the fire started I trapped him in the stall where they found his body and made you run away with me, when you’d wanted to stay and help him.”

Shaw’s body jerked at the awful image his words painted. She shook her head, sending her curls flying into her face. “I wouldn’t have said that. I don’t remember much after you left me here at the house, except that my father ordered me to my room and threatened to sic the sheriff on you if I dared to see you again.” She fought the darkness in her mind, but she couldn’t recall clearly anything that had happened after that point. “But I wouldn’t have accused you of hurting Sebastian.”

“There’s no official statement on file,” he said. “It’s entirely possible your old man made the whole thing up and used his connections to frame me. But it was enough for them to formally charge me while I was too weak and too drugged up to defend myself. Of course my old man was nowhere to be found by then, probably off somewhere getting his drunk on because he couldn’t deal with the entire damn county thinking I’d killed their precious golden boy, after deflowering the Cassidy princess.”

She winced at his description of her. Not that he was wrong. “And I stayed away, too.” She hadn’t been able to sleep or eat. She’d let everything slip away, losing herself in a crippling depression. She hadn’t been nearly strong enough to keep Cole, just like in her last nightmare. “While you thought I blamed you for everything.”

“We were young.” His indifferent shrug punished her far worse than the angry explosion he deserved to throw at her. “It was a long time ago.”

“I came looking for you.” That much she could recall.

It was too little, too late, but she wanted him to know. She couldn’t remember much from after that time, after she’d finally pulled herself together and out of her bedroom. Nothing else was coming back…except for that one afternoon, almost as if her mind knew she needed to see it, so she could tell Cole.

It was the last time she’d run through the woods toward him. It was the day she’d learned she’d have to live without him for the rest of her life.

“I finally confronted my father and made him tell me what was going on. He was so angry still. Until then, I’d had no idea how badly you’d been hurt or that you’d been accused of killing Bastian. Father was tossing things in his office, ripping the room apart. He’d been told you were released from the hospital that morning. The sheriff had called to say the charges against you were dropped due to lack of evidence. The ruckus my father was making was what finally got through to me. I made him tell me everything, all of it, and I ran out of the house before he could stop me.”

“Why?” Cole’s voice was empty. “It had been weeks, Shaw. You hadn’t thought of me in weeks.”

“I thought of you every day.” She’d needed him so much, it had devastated her. Needing anything during that awful time had felt like dying herself. Through Sebastian’s death, she’d faced all over again the reality of how easily things, people, could slip away right before her eyes. Her mother. Her grandmother. And even her hateful brother. “I was terrified of losing you, too.”

“So you pushed me away?”

“I was afraid.”

“You were a scared little girl.”

“Yes.” The accusation stung, but it was the truth. Him leaving her, not giving her a chance to come to her senses, had felt like a betrayal, too. One she’d never recovered from. But she’d brought it on herself. “I should have been there for you, like you had been for me. But as soon as I could, as soon as I found out you were in trouble, I ran to you, Cole. I never said those things to the sheriff.”

“You ran to me?” His expression softened.

“But you were already gone.”

He nodded. “When I was released from the hospital, I walked away from High Lake and never looked back. My old man didn’t want me in his life, and the sentiment was mutual.”

“And you didn’t want me anymore, either.”

He nodded again. “That’s what I told myself. I couldn’t stomach the thought that you’d blamed me for what happened to your brother. If you didn’t want to see me again, I could live with that. But I couldn’t stand hearing you say it. I couldn’t bear—”

“My betrayal.” Shaw closed her eyes and saw again the awful scars on his back. “I ruined it for both of us. I gave you the reason you needed to stop believing in me, the way you thought I’d stopped believing in you. You saved me, and I threw it all away. Yet here you are, in the middle of my mess of a life, protecting me all over again. While I’ve been shrieking at you, not trusting you, because of some stupid dream. Can you ever forgive me for being so careless and stupid with what we had?”

…

It should have meant everything to Cole, finally knowing the truth about their past. It should have washed everything clean between them, cementing the new start they’d begun to build.

Yeah, a part of him should still be pissed. But he could hear the emptiness and pain behind her memories. He’d been careless, too. He’d thrown away the promises they’d made to each other. He hadn’t known how to hold onto something that perfect. He hadn’t fought hard enough to make her understand that they were supposed to be together forever, no matter what. And she’d clearly suffered as much as he had.

Now he had to drop another shitload of pain on top of what her troubled memories had brought back.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, meaning it. “You believed in me then, and you believe me now. I don’t need anything more. But there’s another reason why your nightmare’s painting me into the scene from your shooting. Your intuition is picking up on more than you realize. I don’t want to upset you more, but we have to talk about this.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding miserable but determined not to fall apart again.

Which gave him hope. But would remembering as much of their past as she had help her give them the second chance they deserved, once she learned the truth behind his reappearance in her life?

“Your accidents are happening more frequently, and I have every reason to believe that this is only the beginning. I’m going to protect you from whatever happens next, like I did that day in the barn. Tell me you believe that.”

“Of course I believe you,” she said.

Her open expression nearly brought him to his knees.
Love.
There was only love in her eyes now. Her doubts were gone. He had her complete faith, just as he had all those years ago when he’d thought she’d turned her back on him. He felt an aching desperation to hold onto this moment, to the sweetness of her trusting him. But that wouldn’t keep her safe. And above all else, what Cole wanted most was for Shaw to be safe.

“I couldn’t tell you any of this before,” was his weak-ass opener. “At first I didn’t believe you were in danger, and your memory is so fragile—” He broke off and grimaced. “Shaw, I need you to hear me through and try to remain calm. Give me a chance to explain. I need to know that we’ll still be able to work together, so we can get you out of this mess.”

Wariness had crept into her expression. He sensed her distancing herself, bracing for a blow.

“Okay,” she said. “Talk. All of it this time, Cole. Tell me what you’ve been keeping from me.”

His secure cell phone chose that moment to blast a muted, buzzing demand for his attention. With a curse, he pulled it from his jeans pocket and checked the time on the display. He winced, then entered his password and menued through to the incoming text.

check-in missed. contact,
Dawson’s dictate read.
now.

Stupid.

Were there any other stupid things Cole could do to blow this assignment? Because he’d hate to stop before he made every boneheaded, rookie mistake in the book.