SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (15 page)

Reilly liked him less by the moment.

“Mom,” Analise said when Gracie opened her mouth to retort. “He needs dry clothes, too. Besides, I don’t want to go in that room alone.”

Some silent communication passed between the two of them. Gracie looked like she still wanted to argue, but in the end she said nothing. Analise was right; they all needed dry clothes after being out in the storm. But that wasn’t why Gracie gave in, and Reilly’s guess was that it didn't have a lot to do with being afraid of ghosts, either.

Gracie didn’t look surprised to see Reilly waiting outside her room when she opened her door after she’d changed her clothes. She didn’t look sorry, either. He tried not to make too much of that, but he’d never been that great at listening to his own voice of reason.

When they passed Analise’s room, she paused. “Is he still in there?” she whispered softly.

Reilly nodded. He’d thought about butting in and telling the kid to keep out, but he had no right and he doubted anyone would appreciate his interference.

“Why don’t we go downstairs and I’ll make us some coffee?” he suggested.

Gracie hesitated, but only for a moment. “A cup of coffee sounds like heaven.”

Her horse-dog thought that was a great idea, too, and nearly tripped her in its effort to get down the stairs before them. Reilly caught Gracie around the waist a second before she fell.

“Juliet,” she scolded while a blush traveled up her throat. Her gaze snagged his, and he felt like a kid himself, nervous and excited. Frowning, he made sure she had her balance and stepped away.

“What kind of dog is that, anyway?” he asked.

“A rescue dog. Actually, all three of them are from shelters. Juliet and Tinkerbelle are part Great Dane and part . . . well, I’m not entirely sure what else. Even Romeo is a mutt, but don’t tell him. He’d be horrified if he knew his daddy was Chihuahua.”

Reilly smiled, remembering how much he’d loved her sense of humor. She glanced up, caught him staring and he felt himself blushing. Christ, he needed to hit the road before he got in any deeper.

Chloe, Jonathan, and the priest were still paying cards when they came back. Reilly caught Jonathan eyeing Gracie’s chest again, but the older man about-faced when he realized Reilly had seen him. Gracie ignored Chloe and her bright-eyed curiosity.

In the kitchen, she shook her head. “I don’t like that woman.”

“She’s definitely . . . different.”

Gracie almost smiled. “What’s been going on here?”

“You might want to sit down for that,” he said, opening cupboards until he found the coffee.

“Is it bad? I’ve had enough bad for one day.”

He gave her a searching look as she pulled out a chair and sat at a worn butcher-block table. He set the coffee to brew and took the seat beside her.

“Something happened when you went to pick up the kid?”

It wasn’t really a question, even though he posed it that way. Obviously, something had happened.

“Analise is pregnant,” Gracie said softly.

“What?”

She nodded miserably. “I can’t believe it. I’ve spent my whole life trying to raise her right, trying not to make the same mistakes my grandma made with me. Trying to keep her from making the same mistakes I made. Yet, here we are, in the exact same place.”

Gracie covered her face with her hands, took a deep breath. When she looked at him again, her eyes held such dejected disbelief that he turned her chair and pulled her closer, bracketing her knees with his legs. He looked her in the eye and asked the question that had been bothering him since he’d seen their daughter for the first time. Since Gracie had told him her grandmother had thrown her out, pregnant and sixteen.

“Why didn’t you wait for me, Gracie??”

Gracie lifted her chin. “Why didn’t you take me with you, wherever it was you went? That was our plan. Why didn’t you tell me you’d changed your mind?”

He should have expected it, but surprise made his breath catch somewhere low in his chest and he couldn’t seem to move it any further. A hot, panicky feeling washed over him. He realized he was scared that she wouldn’t believe the truth when she heard it. And he hated how badly he wanted her to understand.

The coffeepot belched, and Reilly used the excuse to escape her perceptive gaze. She didn’t let him get far, though. She followed him, taking the cup he offered and positioning herself in front of him at the counter.

She sipped at her coffee. Waiting.

“Matt,” he said at last. “I didn’t change my mind. Matt changed it.”

Her laugh held little humor. “Of course. Matt always came first.”

“It wasn’t like that. Not this time. It was about you.”

“That’s not new, either, Reilly. He knew I didn’t return his feelings.”

“Yet.”

She raised her brows.

“Matt didn’t see things the way most people do. He didn’t trust what he saw, so you telling him
no
. . . That didn’t mean much to him. In his mind, it just meant he had to try harder to win you.”

Her eyes searched his. She opened her mouth as if to respond and then shut it again.

“I didn’t know how bad things were, though. Maybe I didn’t want to know.”

His reluctance made his words thick. Because pretty soon he would get to the point where he’d have to say things that would hurt her. Even though he was still pissed off about everything that had happened after, about the fact that she’d never told him he had a daughter, he didn’t want to hurt her.

“I told him about us,” he said with a shake of his head. “We said we weren’t going to tell anyone, but I couldn’t just leave him. Not like that. So I told him we were going to run away together.”

The words sounded so immature, so After School Special. But she sucked in a breath and slowly let it out.

“Reilly,” she said on the exhale.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I know it was stupid. I knew it the minute I did it.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He put his fist through the wall and walked out the door. I didn’t see him again until the night before we were supposed to leave.”

“Where did he go?”

“I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I was so fucking relieved, Gracie. A part of me hoped I’d never see him again. My own brother.”

Those words hurt to say out loud, especially now, when he never would see him again.

Gracie set her cup on the counter and stepped closer to him. “You weren’t responsible for Matt, Reilly.”

He laughed. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I was always responsible for Matt. But back then? All I could think about was you and me, getting out of here. Starting a new life away from all the crap in my old one.”

“That’s all either one of us could think about,” she said, lowering her lashes so he couldn’t see the hurt he heard in her voice.

“I came home from work late that night before we were supposed to go and found him on the porch waiting for me. I was packed and ready, but there he was, just sitting in the shadows. Waiting. I could hardly see him at first because the sun was down and the porch light hadn’t worked for years. Wasn’t until I got closer that I realized he was covered in blood.
Caked
in it. His hair, his lashes. Fuck. It was everywhere.”

“Whose blood?”

“When I asked him, he couldn’t remember. He was so whacked-out, he barely knew who he was. He kept babbling about people I’d never heard of, and all I could think was that he was going to fuck everything up. My brother looked like he’d walked out of a chain saw massacre and all I cared about was me and you and how he was going to screw up our plans.”

“So why did you let him?” she asked, her voice small, distant.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

He shrugged. “There’s not always a right one.”

Their gazes locked for a long moment. He thought about stopping right there and heading for the door. Because really, what would it matter to Gracie what had happened next? He’d had his chance with her. She’d said it loud and clear.

“I figured he’d hurt somebody,” he heard himself say. “Maybe killed somebody. He made me think it was you.”

He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t look into those pretty eyes and say the ugly words that haunted him to this day. “He took the time to tell me every step, every detail of how he’d raped and killed you. He was crying the whole time, great big tears smearing all that dried blood into a mess. He looked like a monster.”

Gracie took a step back and braced herself with a hand on the counter.

He turned to stare out the window. In the silence, he watched the deluge pouring from the sky, gushing from the gutters. The world had become a smeared and sooty brown, and his thoughts followed the runoff-carved rivulets across the hard desert floor, racing toward the ruins of Diablo Springs.

“I took off for your house. I ran the whole fucking way, Gracie. It was what, a hundred and eight outside? I still ran. I can remember the fear making my heart hurt. The sweat in my eyes. I got there just as you and your grandma got back from the store. You were telling her about your day, who you’d talked to at school and she asked you about me. At first I was so damn happy to see you, I almost grabbed you right then and there. If I could’ve caught my breath, I probably would have.”

“I never even saw you.”

“No. I heard your grandma say she wanted you to stay away from me because I was trash and I’d make you trash, too. She said I’d drive to your death, just like your father had done to your mother.”

“She would’ve said that about any boy I liked. She was obsessive when it came to that particular topic.”

“But she was right, Gracie.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

He turned on her, suddenly angry. “Are you listening to me? Matt didn’t have your blood on his hands that day, but he could’ve. He might’ve. Eventually, he
would have
.”

He stared at her, the stark truth in his eyes. He saw the moment she heard it, the instant she really
heard
it.

“If I’d left with you the next day, sooner or later, he’d have hunted me down and he would’ve done all those terrible things he described. To you, Gracie. He would have done them to you.”

She shook her head, but not in denial.

“I couldn’t let him near you ever again.”

“So you just left without a word? Why didn’t you tell me, Reilly? Why did you let me believe you’d just left me?”

“How could I tell you that?
I
barely understood and he was my brother.”

“You didn’t even try to explain.”

“And let you talk me out of it? Watch you cry when I still left?”

“I cried anyway.”

“You don’t get it. I didn’t want to leave you, Gracie. I wanted to marry you and live in that fairy tale you’d convinced me we could have. I’d have let you change my mind.”

Her eyes glittered, but she didn’t cry now. She held her lip between her teeth and shook her head.

“And my brother would have killed you.”

She cleared her throat, but her words still came low and thick. “For weeks, I waited for you to come back. I went to the sheriff, Reilly, and reported you missing. When he told me you and your brother had skipped town . . .” She shook her head. “You should have told me the truth. Left me a note. Something.”

Reilly set his mug on the counter next to hers. “I should have. I’ve spent years wishing I would have.”

Wordless, she stared at him while he tried to decipher what he saw in her eyes. He felt open and raw, and the survival instincts that had kept him alive all the hard years between then and now urged him to shut down, get out.

“We were gone about six days before he tried to kill someone else. I’d thought if I could just get him out of Diablo Springs, it would fix him. I realized that wasn’t going to happen. I realized that even if it did, I’d be too broken to care, because without you, there wasn’t much I liked about me. I decided that you were more important than he was.”

Reilly’s voice hardened with the memory of what came next.

“So I got him drunk and got him to tell me whose blood he’d been wearing the night he came home.”

“Whose was it?”

“A stranger. Some poor woman who’d been unlucky enough to meet my brother in a bar. He’d raped her. Murdered her. Thrown her body in the springs. And he was jonesing to do it again. I waited until he went to sleep and called the cops. The body was easy enough to find once I told them where to look. They never identified her, though. No one ever came forward to claim her. She was just some lost soul he killed.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel. It took some time to take care of things. Matt . . .” He shook his head. “He cried when he found out I’d turned him in. I still hear him sometimes.”

Gracie stared at him, her eyes such a closed book that he had no idea what she might be thinking. He pushed away from the counter and faced the back door, looking out at the storm. Feeling it bluster inside him.

“I came back after that, and your grandmother wouldn’t even open the door. I found out from Charlie, down at the Buckboard, that you’d quit your job and gone to live with relatives somewhere east.”

She cleared her throat. “We don’t have relatives in the east, or anywhere else that I know of.”

Obviously, Carolina had wanted to make sure Reilly never found out where she’d sent Gracie.

“I didn’t think you were ever coming back,” Gracie said. “By then I figured out I was pregnant. I told my grandma—there was no else to tell—and she packed me up and shipped me to San Diego to live with an old friend I’d never even heard of before. Mrs. Graham, an elderly woman who used to stay at the Diablo, back when she was young. I didn’t have a choice about any of it.”

“Your grandma didn’t tell you I came looking for you?”

Gracie shook her head. “I called her every week, and every week she made a point of telling me I needed to move on. You were gone and never coming back.”

“What a bitch.”

“I wrote to my friends, though. I told them where I was. You could have come for me. I used to lie in bed and pray that you would.”

“Not a soul knew where you were, Gracie. I asked. I’d just put my brother in the fucking penitentiary so I could be with you. Believe me, I asked. I couldn’t understand how you gave up on me just like that.”