Unbreakable (37 page)

Faith’s gaze followed. “You’re not your father, Casper. You’re not going to get drunk and beat Clay—”

“It’s not about Clay. It’s not about my father. Or Suzanne or anything but…”

“But me?”

And here we go.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you do this,” he said, waving the beer he really didn’t want anymore. Drinking wasn’t going to make any of what was going on here easier, and he was too old to work the ranch with a hangover. Then there was the part about taking on the role of a father, and he better than anyone knew that was best done sober. “Should’ve left well enough alone, sold the place, stuck to the ranch.”

“It’s okay, you know, for good things to happen to you. You deserve them.” She raised a hand, rubbed it down his arm.

He spun on her, dislodging it. “Why, Faith? Why do I deserve anything good?”

She backed away, frowning. “Are you out here having a pity party? Because the sex wasn’t great?”

“For you, maybe. I had a goddamn good time.”

Her brows came together in a dark, somber vee. “Why are you being like this?”

“Like what? Like I’ve always been? A sonuvabitch?”

“That’s not how you’ve been lately,” she said, her voice going soft, that softness breaking. “That’s not how I know you.”

“Guess you’ve been living in fantasy land. Fucking the cowboy. Redeeming the cowboy. Riding the cowboy. Yeah. You do that one well.”

She shook her head, crossed her arms over her middle, and held herself tight. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“In Spanish, they say
adios
!”

“I’m not going to say good-bye. We can still be…”

“Friends?
Amigos
?” He laughed, the sound ripped from his gut. “Do you really think we can be
amigos
?”

“We were friends before.”

He straightened, and with his heart pounding like horse hooves at full gallop, he advanced on her, stopping with inches between them. He glared at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “I hadn’t been inside your pussy before.”

She swallowed, looked away, and rolled her eyes, her nose coming up a notch as she said, “Reverting to being crass won’t get you—”

“I’m not reverting, Faith. Don’t you get that? This is who I am. Who I’ve always been.” He waved a hand over her head. “This is who this house taught me to be.” Then he caught sight of the girl from the porch headed toward him with a wave and a big bright smile.

“Shit,” he said, looking back at Faith, but not quickly enough.

She glanced over her shoulder, turned back to him, fuming. “You’re right. You
are
a son of a bitch.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the girl said, slowing her pace as she approached. “Is this not a good time?”

Faith spun on her. “No, Luck. It’s not a good time. And if you want to keep your job with Arwen, it’ll never be a good time.”

“Hey,” Luck said, holding her small purse at her waist as she backed away in her heels that were almost taller than her skirt was long. “It was his idea. I thought that meant the coast was clear.”

“The coast is not clear. The coast will
never
be clear,” Faith said, her voice pitched low and barely audible but that much more powerful for it.

Casper watched Luck’s retreat before looking back at Faith, something like hope pulling at his chest. “Did you just threaten her job?”

Faith didn’t answer. “Your idea? Seriously? What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting on with the rest of my life?”

“Are you kidding me? After everything we’ve—”

“We’ve what? Done together? Been to each other? Your money and my cock make a great team, but other than that—”

It was all he got out before she knocked the beer from his hand and slapped him square in the face. He reeled, shook his head, lifted his hand to his cheek. She covered her mouth with her hands, the moisture in her eyes shimmering and threatening to spill.

He wasn’t going to let her guilt get to him. They needed to have this out. Put an end to an affair that was obviously making her miserable.

He picked up the longneck, looked at what was left of the contents before looking at her. “Tell me it’s not the truth.”

She hitched her shoulders as if shaking off bird shit and made fists. “If I have to tell you that, then maybe it is, and if that’s what you think of me, I don’t know why I’m here.”

He snorted. “Then go. Maybe I can still catch Luck.”

“Why don’t you do that? In fact, why don’t I find her for you?” She advanced, stabbing a finger to the center of his chest and causing him to wince. “Your cock and her daddy’s money should make a really good team.”

Then she whirled away, her skirt a cloud of white against the dark of the night.

“Goddammit.
Goddammit!
” Rearing back, he slammed his fist into his truck’s bed, then the door, over and over until he missed and drove his arm through passenger-side window. The glass popped and shattered. Pain bolted like lightning from his wrist to his shoulder, and he stumbled two steps before catching himself. “Aww, shit.
Shit.
”

“Casper!” Faith ran toward him. “What did you do?”

He waved her away, then cradled his hand to his chest. It was
wet and sticky and a really dark color of red. “You’re going to get blood on your dress.”

“I don’t care about my dress. Let me see your hand.”

“Here,” Clay said from where he’d sprinted up from the other side, jerking open his shirt and skinning it off. He handed it to Faith. “Use this.”

“Thanks,” she said, shaking it out then reaching for Casper’s arm and wrapping him like a mummy from elbow to fingertips, grumbling words he couldn’t hear all the while.

That made him smile. Her muttering. Her attention. Clay’s concern was in there, too. He felt as if he were standing in some twisted family drama, his woman on one side, his kid on the other, his house behind him full of friends who were full of booze and good barbecue. Except none of it was real.

The only thing real was his hand swelling to the size of a bull scrotum. “I should probably go to the ER.”

“Ya think?” Faith yanked open the door with the broken window. “Get in. I’m driving.”

“It’s my truck.”

“And your hand is bleeding everywhere. Just get in,” she said, using the hem of her dress to sweep the glass from the seat to the floor. “And don’t say a goddamn word.”

H
IS ARM IN
a sling, his hand bound to his chest like a football, Casper sat on the foot of the ER table, thinking come morning, it might just be his head giving him the most hell. Damn Boone and those stupid designer beers. Damn himself and his lack of control. Damn Faith for being everything he wanted and not letting him in. Why he’d been so slow to the realization that he’d been the only one taking a knife to his past and bleeding out…

It was the sex. It had to be. He’d been too wrapped up in her body to see that she’d held back the rest. He knew nothing that had gone on with her between his leaving Crow Hill and now. The things she’d shared these last few weeks were things he’d been there for, the breakfasts and dinners and overnights in her family’s home. Boone had been more forthcoming, hinting at a terrible happening and demanding he not judge.

After needles and x-rays and all sorts of new pain driving home the fact that he was too old to be stupid, he’d sobered enough to return to thinking about her, that room upstairs, her pushing and pulling and all those mixed signals. But thinking about her wasn’t going to get them anywhere, so when he heard the strike of her heels on the tiled floor, her steps determined, he decided it was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting—whether she liked it or not.

“You’re still here?” he asked as she slipped through the curtain partitioning his room from the others.

Her face was pale and drawn, with purple half-moons shadowing her eyes. They were the same color as the bruise he’d left on her throat, the one she’d tried to hide with her hair. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He lifted his arm. “It’s just a hand.”

“Three broken bones, forty-two stitches. That’s
just
what it is.”

Yeah. That was going to hurt. “So much for safety glass, huh.”

She came to him, touched his knee, his face, then laced her hands in front of her. “Good lord, Casper. What were you thinking?”

That I couldn’t let you walk out of my life.
But he was stopped from saying anything by the curtain fluttering again.

“Here you go, Ms. Mitchell,” said the woman wearing aqua Coleman Medical scrubs and thick white shoes. “Your copies of the paperwork.”

“Thank you.” Faith took the packet, holding it at her waist as the nurse turned to Casper, her cloud of red hair bobbing.

“Dr. Pope will be in with your prescriptions and follow-up orders in a few minutes,” she said, checking the tape on his bandage, the buckle on his sling.

“Thanks.” Casper waited on saying more until they were once again alone. He nodded toward the envelope. “What’s that?”

Faith clutched it tightly, her fingers crushing the bulk of it. “Paperwork. Like she said.”

“What kind of paperwork?” he asked as if he already didn’t know.

“I was settling the bill.”

Yeah, that’s what he’d thought. “You paid my bill.”

“You don’t have insurance.”

“And I don’t have cash.”

She met his gaze squarely, exhaustion grooved deep at the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t want them to wrap you up and send you off to the county hospital. I wanted to make sure they took care of you here.”

“They did,” he said, and before she could get out another word or he lost his nerve, he added, “And now it’s your turn.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked, her brow a vee of knitted disbelief.

He thought back to the day in the bank when she’d accused him of being crass. “Nope,” he said, letting her stew a few more seconds. Then he said, “Tell me about the money.”

At that, she tightened, going stiff and stuck-up. “That’s my business—”

“Fuck that, Faith. My business is your business is my business.”

But she was shaking her head. “Our partnership only covers the house—”

“I’m not talking about the fucking house.” Biting off a sharp, “Shit,” he rubbed away the anger pounding like a horseshoe hammer in his temple. “You’re going to be honest with me now. After what you did to me in that room earlier tonight, you owe me.”

She spun on him, and he swore he could see the words, “I don’t owe you anything,” stuck on her tongue, and he knew she was right. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to press. He wanted to know. He
needed
to know. Wherever the money had come from, that place had its clutches in her and she needed to pry them loose.

They couldn’t go anywhere if she didn’t pry them loose.

She collapsed then, leaned against the supply table beside his bed, gave a weak gesture to encompass so many things. “I shouldn’t have offered you the money in the first place.”

“Where’d it come from, Faith?”

She walked away, rubbing at her forehead, her heels once again clicking time. “I never wanted it. I did a stupid thing and people got hurt.”

“Did you get hurt?” he asked because they were finally getting somewhere.

“Not nearly enough. Not
nearly
enough.”

He’d come back to that later. “When did you do this stupid thing?”

“In college.”

“And who’d you do it with?” Because he could never see Faith being stupid alone. She was too in the moment, too on the ball. Too completely aware of every single move she made.

“The son of the dean at the school of business.”

Yeah, that could be stupid, but there had to be something more than a sex scandal, what with the kind of money that came her way in the end. “You did more than fuck him.”

Her gaze sliced into him, her eyes narrowed, her frown wrinkled and harsh. “Yes, we had a sexual relationship. We also dated for two years.”

Fine. It wasn’t just sex. “This dean’s son have a name?”

“What does it matter?”

It didn’t, but he wanted to know. “What was his name?”

“Jeremy,” was all she gave him. Then she added, “Jon.”

Okay. Unexpected, but okay. “And what bad thing did you and Jeremy…and Jon do?”

“Jon was Jeremy’s father,” she said, her voice level, her gaze level, too. Both calm now. Both cool.

“The dean,” he said, feeling tension like a vise in his jaw.

She nodded, her arms crossed, the envelope still in her hand. “He’d been widowed young. Raised Jeremy on his own. They were…well-to-do. Old money. And Jon…He was very attractive.”

“You did the father, too,” he said, and he thought his jaw might pop.

Another nod, more clicking of her heels as she paced. “I was dumb. I was nineteen.”

“He was what? Forty-something?”

“Jeremy was twenty when he was killed. Jon was forty-five.”

“Wait,” he said, shaking off the drugs and sitting taller as if it would help catch her words. “Jeremy was killed? You’re losing me here, Faith.”

“Jeremy was…wild. Reckless. His mother died when he was a boy. Jon had been a single parent. One whose own parents had solved any problems he had with money. The best private schools. The best tutors. The best lawyers when he’d gone off the deep end of privilege. The best psychiatrists.”

“This is the father you’re talking about. And he told you all this.”

“Yes, Jon. And he used his family money to treat Jeremy the same way. He’d turned out okay…”

“And he thought the kid would, too. As long as he kept on spending.”

“Something like that.” She stopped pacing, stood beside him
at the foot of the bed. “Jeremy had the car, the clothes, the whole look. He could get tickets to anything. Backstage passes. He flew first class. His family had, or I suppose still has, homes on both coasts. West Palm Beach. Cape Cod. Malibu. Bainbridge Island.”

“You hit the jackpot.”

She stiffened. “I was in love with him. Or as in love as someone can be at nineteen. I didn’t need him to take me anywhere. Or to buy me anything.”

But he did because that’s all he’d been taught to do, Casper surmised. “So what happened?”