Spirit Lake (6 page)

When she looked at him, his steady gaze unsettled her more.

“Was I the fool, Cole? You rushed out of my life back to Miami, but did you already have someone else there? Were you thinking of her when we exchanged vows here?"

His eyes deepened under the shadows of his bent brow. From his hesitation, she had answer enough.

He'd borne a son. Soon after he'd left her. At the altar. The ache stabbing her was almost unbearable.

She handed back the photo. “When was he born? And how is your wife? They don't mind you taking off for a quiet week of train hopping?” It was perverse, she knew, to jab at him, but she had to. Her heart demanded retribution.

He eased down to the ground, parting the long grass to sit. “Tyler's mother and I divorced a few years ago and we rarely see her. And he wasn't conceived until after she and I had married."

“We were married—"

“It wasn't legal. Just two kids in love with romance exchanging words in private."

Remembering him promising to make it legal, she gulped back a lump choking her throat.

He eyed her, then shook his head. Pain racked his face. She hoped it was connected to guilt. That much he owed her.

“Tyler's mother and I had known each other a long time. My parents and her parents were friends. The same social circles."

That stung. “Is that it?” She slammed down the towels and first-aid kit. “You needed the family nod before you'd marry a woman? My father would have come around, if you'd been here."

His face fell. “That wasn't it at all."

“Then what was it? Couldn't find your father to talk to him because he was over in England tending to his foodstore chain—"

“Laurel—"

“Then there was your mother's family in some wine country—"

“They lived in Chile. Damnit, I didn't have what you'd consider a normal life like you. I told you about all the traveling in my life. Stephanie was my constant during school, always there, always sure of her course in life. We'd always been friends."

Laurel's jawed clenched so tight she could barely speak. “You never mentioned this Stephanie."

“You're getting this all mixed up. She didn't matter to me. I mean, until after us."

Laurel turned away, ready to be ill. Back then, she'd built up so many scenarios to help justify her anger. Sarcastically, she said, “So you weren't seduced as part of some girl's plot to take your family money? You didn't fall for a starlet or bimbo?"

“No. I'm afraid Stephanie was what I wasn't."

“A responsible, upstanding citizen?"

“Sounds like your daddy's words."

Laurel shuddered, but turned to him, sighing when recalling her father railing at her about Cole back then. “What's wrong in wanting, no, expecting more than just hearing you'd called a couple of times? Then nothing?"

He rose and hobbled over to her until he blocked out the sun. “Whenever I made those phone calls your father got on the line,” he muttered, “and told me to quit bothering you."

She stood in his shadow, shivering, angry, stricken by all the news, the flashbacks bursting like bombs in her head ... and a man standing before her she didn't recognize except for those deep, dark eyes.

With a finger, he tipped her chin up. A bolt of heat shocked her from head to toe and back again. When had he gotten so tall, and even more dangerous looking? The year after he left? Or yesterday, just to niggle her with a giant ruse, another prank?

“Hey,” he said, his voice husky, “I never wanted to hurt you."

Finding it impossible to breathe with him touching her, she pulled away. “What you didn't want was me. Why can't you say it instead of talking about ‘what was best for me’ as if I were your child? I was your ... lover."

She wanted to swallow back the word. A knot had its way in her stomach. Because of him, she'd made choices to avoid putting her heart in vulnerable situations. And here he stood again.

He looked different, standing there patiently. Could she pretend he wasn't the same old trouble?

Could she believe anything he'd just told her?

She picked up her supplies again and headed toward her boat, weary, wanting to escape to the safety of her cabin across the bay. “Excuse me, but I have things to do."

“Laurel?"

The languid way her name rolled off his tongue in a husky whisper halted her in her tracks. Hearing him call to her had once signaled joy. Now, he offered nothing but confusion. She kept her back to him, afraid of looking into his mesmerizing eyes, afraid he might read the secrets of her new life and be disappointed in her. Maybe angry with her own betrayal of him. “I can't get involved in whatever you're doing here."

“I could use your help."

Anger sparked within her again. She faced him, throwing her shoulders back. “No. You're not going to use me. Not anymore."

When she began walking away, she heard him shuffling through the weeds after her. “Laurel, wait."

She picked up her pace, fear riddling her.

Then she heard him stumble. He spilled out a string of expletives that echoed across the clearing.

“Cole?” She swung around, saw the genuine pain wrinkling his whiskery face and brow, and went to him. His injuries worried her all over again, despite her resolve. Worry and tend—a reflex.

He lay in a heap, face contorted, smile now a grimace. Her makeshift bandage—her undershirt—had worked loose under his pant's leg, exposing his calf. All her experience with animals didn't prepare her for the fiery red and mottled skin swollen with infection. Cole was a strong man; he couldn't be this vulnerable. The realization stole her breath.

Gulping, she asked, “What happened to you?"

“Mike was murdered,” he grunted, closing his dark eyes against pain.

“Murdered?” It lanced a shiver up and down her spine. Or was this one of his acts?

He opened one eye against the relentless sunshine, and she couldn't mistake the tortured look. “I buried Mike, Laurel. My brother is gone.” She watched him torturing a hand into a fist. “Now I'm the prey."

His eyes took on the soulful, instinctual desperation she'd seen in the yellow-tinged eyes of a live wolf caught in a trap, a powerful animal rendered helpless. Needy. She believed him, but that didn't help her nerves. They turned to ice with fear.

She felt herself being sucked in here, too. Her heart flailed against him as if she were thrashing to save herself from drowning in the lake. “You? The prey? How do you know?"

“The killer's my boss."

“What?!"

“Unique downsizing concept. Instead of firing me, he decided to fire at me."

When she glowered at him, he added, “Help me, Laurel Lee."

A hitch in her heartbeat gave her pause.

Nobody had called her that since he had, long ago.
Laurel Lee
. In the meadow. Their meadow. The shrine to so much. Too much.

Against her better judgment, she lowered a plank across the moat of their history. “Let me see that leg. And then I want you to get the hell out of here and never come back."

Chapter 4

AFTER LAUREL finished ripping away the T-shirt bandage, she split the seam of Cole's pant's leg up to his knee to gain easier access to the raw flesh of his calf. A huge, festering wound threaded from the front to the back, threatening her with nausea.

“Cole, you need hospital treatment."

A hand snaked up and gripped her upper arm. “I can't risk being found out. I mean it, Laurel. Some bum with a ripped up leg with a bullet in it sounds like local front-page news to me."

Her pulse quickened under his grip. “Then I'll bring a doctor here."

“All it takes is one slip, and I'm dead. My son will never see me again. You hear me?"

Like talons his fingers dug into her, frightening her more. A shudder thundered through her. His son. How could he be involved in such danger?

“Don't, Cole. You're scaring me."

“I mean to. The man after me doesn't care who gets in his way. Listen to me or you'll get hurt."

“I don't take orders from the likes of you.” All she wanted, was to run from him. Staring him down, she attempted to quell her ragged breathing, to no avail.

But something in his dark eyes twitched, and he let go of her to lay back in the grass, groaning. “Just take out the damn bullet. Now."

“I told you, I don't know if I can. You need to be in a hospital."

“You told me you doctor animals."

“All I have in the kit is a short scalpel and a tweezers. I can lance it, but I can't go digging around for a bullet—"

“You're stalling, Laurel Lee. Give me the thing."

Laurel Lee
. Her heartbeat pulsated wildly. How dare he call her the endearment that used to make her giggle when he shouted silly limericks and rhymes.
Laurel Lee, come with me
. How dare he use it to attempt to get his way now, to make her stay by him.

He lunged for the first-aid kit, terrifying her. Shoving it out of his reach, she suffered the threat of his narrowing eyes, and snapped, “Don't force your danger on me, not after all these years of nothing between us."

He didn't flinch. “I have no choice."

Their gazes locked, nerves fraying, the breeze rattling the tops of the brown, dried grass against his shoulders. A crow cawed, as if to warn her to send him away. Soon. Before his gaze saw what lay in the bottom of the well inside her soul. Her own secrets. “I'll see what I can do."

He nodded, a grin of relief nudging the wide, firm mouth. “I never would have thought you the doctoring kind."

“Why not?” Her fingers quaked when she considered her task of cutting into Cole. Her Cole.

“You could never sit still for long."

“Neither could you,” she said, pushing her palm against his chest. To her surprise, he obeyed and laid back in the grass.

“You used to fidget when I took you to the drive-in."

“It's long closed.” She grimaced at the sore leg.

“Too bad. I would have liked to do that again—"

“You're not staying that long,” she said, her heart racing. He couldn't stay. He just could not.

“And you drummed your fingers on the restaurant table because I ate too slowly."

The small talk was getting on her nerves. She reached for her scalpel and huddled over his leg. “I did it to bug you. You always ordered two desserts. No girl in her right mind could eat that much and not become wide as a barn."

“Not you, Laurel Lee. You had those skinny long legs—"

“Will you shut up, please.” Now she was the one with the fever, her fingers trembling as she gently explored the mottled flesh, trying to find the entry point of the bullet. But the thought niggled her: He remembered those little things about them back then. A feathery warmth tugged at her.

“This is bad, Cole. I shouldn't try this. And you shouldn't want me to. Grab some courage and common sense and get to a hospital."

Popping up to his elbows, he spat through gritted teeth, “I don't give a damn about courage. Mike's play at being captain courageous got him killed. Just do it. All I want is justice."

Justice? It stunned her. It's what she'd dreamed of getting from him for years. The same reckless Cole still lurked under this almost unrecognizable taller, more muscular version of the man she'd fallen in love with once. Now he called recklessness, justice? Maybe he deserved the pain she was about to inflict, at his own insistence.

Sucking in a steadying breath, she poised the scalpel, her other hand gripping his cool, tanned calf muscle.

To his credit, he barely flinched when she lanced the wound. But when she wiped away festering pus and blood with a towel, making him roll over slightly to slosh disinfectant quickly behind, he howled like a dog hit by a car. “Yeoooowww, woman! Have mercy!"

“I was beginning to think you weren't human."

“Got the bullet yet?"

A sickly chill trickled through her. “Still in there."

“Get it, Laurel Lee."

She needed him fixed up and out of her life before the bad memories—and pain—began to thunder back. She knew they would, given time.

She plunged deep into the cut with a tweezers.

“Woman, what the—"

With a great sense of relief, and with the breeze cooling her perspiring forehead, she pried open one of his fists and plunked a ragged, bloody pellet into his palm.

He lolled back on the grass, still wincing. “Thank you. I think."

“You're welcome,” she said, relief crawling through her.

She couldn't take her eyes off his whiskery jawline, or the firm muscles of his neck leading like steel bands to the juncture with his shoulders. Her lips parted, tingling, remembering how tentatively she'd kissed him once upon a time in the hollow of his neck. How they'd lay in grass just like this, pointing out faces in the clouds. She realized, deep down, she longed to taste his skin, his firm mouth, to lay there beside him. To compare the sensations. Then and now.

When she picked up her only needle and began poking at his flesh to suture, he cursed, “Nurse Nightmare, what tool is that? A pitchfork?"

“I usually use these on raccoons, possums and dogs. Of course, they're laid on the bench in the animal shed and knocked out with medication or tied down."

“Sounds positively comfy."

“I'll only take a couple of necessary stitches here. You need major human antibiotics and another go at those stitches with more appropriate equipment."

“Your equipment's fine, doc."

Heat flashed like last night's storm across her cheeks. “Your equipment could find itself out of order if blood poisoning sets in. You might do well to listen to me."

“Thanks, doc. Your bedside manner's improving. I'll write a letter recommending you get a raise."

His mirth and cockeyed smile pierced a part of her heart she'd closed years ago. But she refused to trust anything about him. Quickly grabbing the T-shirt and what little tape she had left in her kit, she began securing the T-shirt and a towel over the wound by winding the tape over it and around his calf.

“It'll hurt for a few days, even a week or two,” she said, her fingers trembling under his watchful gaze.

“You've got a tender touch,” he mused. “Always had."