had so longed to give birth to, that had been taken from her.
She should have told him. And now, it just may have come too late.
CHAPTER 21
The past was like a ghost, a haunting spectre he couldn’t escape no matter his attempts. No matter the attempts his cousins made. From their births, they had faced the hatred and controversy of their well-loved mothers marrying the town’s least-loved citizens.
The Callahan brothers had been more than the town had known and yet less than it would have taken for Corbin County citizens to ever make the move to ignore the call to ostracize anything Callahan.
Before Rafe’s, Logan’s, and Crowe’s fathers had married the three heiresses, they hadn’t been ostracized. They had been liked, not always trusted but always able to charm their way into the hearts and minds of those they knew. Once their relationships with the Corbin, Rafferty, and Ramsey daughters were known, all that had changed.
James Corbin and Saul Rafferty had been certain that public condemnation would destroy those relationships. They hadn’t realized how stubborn and how deeply their daughters had loved the men they had chosen.
As Rafe stared down at Cami, he was reminded, not for the first time, of the legacy his, Logan’s, and Crowe’s parents had left them. A legacy that made the lives of the women they might love potentially dangerous. A legacy that those women might not be able to adapt to as easily as they had, because they had lived it every day of their lives. Perhaps, in a way, they had grown used to it.
Cami wasn’t a woman known to apologize. Jaymi had once told her that even when Cami had been no more than a teenager, she never apologized. When Jaymi asked her why, Cami had stared back at her with what she described as grim determination and said because she made certain she meant everything she said and everything she did.
She had just been a child then, her life a series of disappointments and chastisements. What Jaymi had said was a teenager’s habit of rebelling, Eddy had described as a result of a young girl constantly being berated instead.
“We’ll talk later,” Rafe promised as he fought to push back the rage that still burned from their earlier confrontation.
It wasn’t a rage directed at her, at least not entirely.
It was directed at life, at the circumstances, at the loss of a life that hadn’t had the chance to even live.
She turned away quickly, the sharp inhalation of breath drawing his attention. Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. The last thing he intended to do. But neither would he lie to her.
He wasn’t about to tell her to not worry about it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her it was okay. Because it wasn’t. What he did intend to do was teach her to never fucking hide anything else from him.
She hadn’t exactly lied to him, but the lie of omission could be just as destructive. And if there was a chance in hell of a future with her, then she would have to learn the value of never keeping secrets from him.
Catching her wrist as she moved to turn away from him, Rafe threaded his fingers with hers, gripping her hand and holding her close as the sheriff discussed the explosion with Crowe.
Rafe could see Archer was having problems with the information Cami had given him and the fact that the garage had obviously been deliberately blown to fucking hell.
“Sheriff, we can’t find any bodies,” the fire marshal, Drew Jacoby, stated in a rasping growl. Jacoby, a transplant from Denver whom the city had hired when they moved from the volunteer fire department to a paid force, was a tall, rough-talking Texan who rarely put up with any crap at all. Especially the gossiping kind.
Archer turned from the Callahans as he whipped his hat from his head and pushed his fingers through the short strands of his thick, dark hair.
“Maybe they weren’t there,” he suggested, hope filling his voice.
Jacoby gave a heavy shrug of his shoulders as he turned back to the charred remains of the garage, his expression brooding.
“We can hope—”
“Hey, Sheriff, it’s Townsend!” Deputy Eisner announced, his voice high, excited, as a black sedan raced into the parking lot to come to a bone-jarring stop.
Jeannie was out of the car first, with Jack stepping out more slowly, his expression bemused as he stared at the garage as though he was certain he had to be seeing things.
Cami ran for the couple, aware of Rafe’s hand still gripping hers as he all but pulled her along, his long, powerful legs outdistancing hers.
“Jeannie.” Cami pulled away from Rafe, her arms going around the other woman as Jeannie suddenly began sobbing.
“Oh my God,” she cried, holding on to Cami desperately. “What happened? Cami, what happened?”
“We were so scared you and Jack were in there.” Cami pulled back to glance back at the garage, then to Jeannie and Jack once again. “Thank God you’re all right.”
“But what happened?” Confusion and fear filled her gaze.
“Bastard!” Jack suddenly cursed. “That fucking bastard. He called last night.” Jack turned to Cami, his eyes blazing with fury. “He told me I should’ve kept my nose out of Callahan business and I’d learn the hard way I should have gone to Denver with the rest of the family.”
Cami drew back from Jeannie slowly.
She could feel the guilt moving in, slowly, surely. This was her fault. Jack had been trying to help her. If he hadn’t been the one she had questioned after leaving Rafe’s, if he hadn’t become curious because of her questions, then this would have never happened.
“Cami, this wasn’t your fault.” Jeannie suddenly caught her arm as Rafe, distracted by Jack’s announcement, turned away from her. “You didn’t cause any of this, I swear. Jack has been bothered by too many things lately where his friends are concerned. And pretending the Callahans weren’t his friends when they returned wasn’t happening.”
Cami shook her head. She didn’t believe Jack would have begun questioning his father over the Callahans, though, or learned about the brake lines to Jaymi’s car with the wreck twelve years ago if it hadn’t been for her.
Those particular questions were the ones that had made Jack a target. Just as they had made her a target.
“Let me find the son of a bitch and I’ll kill him,” Jack snarled as Cami turned to see him staring at the bulding with naked pain.
“Jack, think of Jeannie,” Archer warned him, his voice low. “If you’re out chasing the bad guys, who’s going to protect her? Leave this to me. I promise you, I’m not my father. I’ll find out who’s behind it.”
“Dammit, Archer, you think I’m just going to sit around and wait for that son of a bitch to just find me and Jeannie and announce his presence again?” A tight, savage smile curled his lips. “Hell no, I won’t. You better hope you find him before I do. Because when I get my hands on him there won’t be anything to prosecute.”
He was enraged, but at least he was alive, Cami thought as she felt Rafe’s arm curl around her back, his fingers gripping her hip to pull her closer to him.
He was making a statement. As the crowd grew around the destroyed garage he was making it a point to show everyone who bothered to look exactly whom she was with there.
And there was plenty of looking. She could feel the gazes, some antagonistic, others curious, and still others calculating.
She met those gazes defiantly. She’d spent too many years running from what she wanted, running from the only man who did anything to fire her blood or to make her feel more than friendship.
