Lady Killer

wondered how he could have let himself come to this in so short a time.

She trusts me. Daniel trusts me. Hell, even the dog trusts me. And I’ve lied to them all. She doesn’t know who I really am or why I’m really here. She doesn’t even know who she really is. How am I going to tell her?

Oh, God…I have to tell her, now.

“Brooke-” he began, at the same moment she said, “Tony-”

He paused, and they both said together, “There’s something I have to tell you-” They both stopped again, laughing in a rueful, pain-filled way.

“Me, first,” she said in a thickened voice, pulling back and gazing earnestly at him. The back of one hand was pressed against her nose, and above it her eyes were dark and still, like deep forest ponds, reflecting only the moonlight. It was only because he was holding her that he felt her shiver.

“Okay,” he said, “but only if we find a warmer spot first. You’re cold.” But it was he who felt cold-on the outside where her body had nestled, and inside, deep in the pit of his stomach, where the fear was.

She shook her head but turned in his embrace and slipped an arm around his waist as they began to walk together back toward the barn. “Not cold. Nervous, maybe.” She glanced at him, then quickly away, making him realize what an understatement that was.

He wanted to say something to take away her fear, but his own was so deep, he didn’t trust himself to utter a sound. He couldn’t ask her what she might have to confess, to be nervous about-how could he, when uppermost in his mind was that she was about to tell him she’d killed her husband, after all, and that he’d been wrong about her all along? So he walked beside her in the moonlight, her arm around him and his around her. It occurred to him that they must look like lovers, but while her body felt warm and vital against him, the cold he felt inside was the sick and clammy chill of dread.

In the barn, they sat on a bale of hay in a patch of moonlight framed by the big open door, side by side, like children on a bench. Brooke shifted, turning to half face him as she took one of his hands in both of hers. Her shoulders lifted as she took a breath.

“Brooke,” he burst out, unable to stand it anymore, “I can understand if it was self-defense-”

“What?” She blinked and shook her head sharply, as if coming out of a daze. Then clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh-oh, God. You thought-oh, stupid me.” She stared at him for a moment, then smiled crookedly and said, with that Texas twang he was beginning to find so unexpectedly endearing, “Tony, you poor thing. You’re sittin’ there thinkin’ you’re about to find out you’ve just been kissin’ a cold-blooded killer, aren’t you?”

“Well,” he said in a garbled imitation of a frog.

“No, it’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I should have thought.” She faced forward again and didn’t reclaim his hand, bracing hers on the edge of the bale instead as she rocked herself slightly. She gave a faint laugh. “Funny thing is, I never even thought about…that. Can you believe that? I actually forgot for maybe a minute.” Her voice took on an edge, and she threw him a quick, intense look over her shoulder. “The answer to the question that’s eatin’ you up inside is, no, I did not kill my husband. Ex-husband,” she amended wearily, closing her eyes. “You can believe that or not…but it’s true.”

Tony cleared his throat and found his voice was functional again, and that the cold place in his belly was fading. “I do believe you. I have been believing you. That’s why I’m here.”

“But you’ve had doubts.” She looked at him over her shoulder again, sadly this time. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have thought I was about to confess.”

He tried to smile. “I can’t argue with the logic of that, so I’m not even going to try. But since we both know you’re not a murderer, what is this thing you feel you have to tell me?”

She looked at him for a long time, her eyes lingering, not on his eyes, but on his mouth…his shoulders, his chest. The stark hunger…yearning…he saw on her face nearly stopped his heart, then quickened it again. She turned away quickly, but not before he saw her lips quiver…saw her press them tightly together to stop it.

In a voice so low he had to lean closer to hear it, she said, “I want you to know…it felt so good, you holding me. Felt too good, you kissing me, me kissing you-I didn’t want it to end. But…I thought, before I let this go any further, you should know exactly who you’d be kissing.” She gave him that over-the-shoulder look again, and now it reminded him of one of the wild things he’d stalked with his cameras, watching him as he approached her comfort zone, wary and uncertain, not quite sure whether to be afraid. “There are an awful lot of things you don’t know about me.”

I probably know more about you than you can begin to imagine…things you don’t even know yourself, Tony thought. But aloud he said indulgently, with all the confidence in the world, thinking no matter what she had to tell him, it couldn’t possibly rival the bombshell he was about to drop on her, “It’s all right. You can tell me, Brooke.”

She nodded. Said, “I know. All right.” Cleared her throat, sat up straight, looked him in the eye and said, “I was molested.”

He couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d hauled off and slugged him. He stared at her blankly. The words she’d spoken had no meaning; they rang in his ears like the discordant clang of a broken bell.

She rushed on, filling his silence with more of those incomprehensible words. “Abused. Sexually. Raped… actually. When I was a child. By my brother-adopted brother.”

He was-had always been-a man who respected, even revered, women. The very idea that a man could mistreat or terrorize a woman-any woman, of any age-was simply appalling to him. But this woman…and a child…He wanted to cover his ears like a child himself. Wanted to tell her to stop. He could feel the edges of his world curling in on him, shimmering…turning dark. And still the words came.

“He was older-ten years older. It started when I was fourteen-that’s when my sister ran away. He’d been doing it to her since we were about…eleven, I think. Maybe even before that. I think I knew, but I didn’t want to, you know? So I didn’t tell anybody. Then my sister ran away, and that’s when he…he turned to me.”

Why didn’t you tell someone? His mind, finally functioning again, shrieked the question, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask it. It seemed too much like an accusation. Like blame. And that was the last thing she needed, he realized. She’d been blaming herself far too long already.

He didn’t ask it, but she answered as if he had. “I didn’t tell my parents, because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. I’m sure that’s why my sister didn’t tell anyone, either. He-Clay-was their son. Their real son, you know?” There were tears on her cheeks now. He wondered if she even knew. “He would have denied it or else blamed us. I know he would have. My parents were very religious-the hellfire and damnation kind of religious. I was sure they’d disown me if they knew. My father would have, anyway. I think I told you, he never wanted to adopt us to begin with. I think he just went along with it because he knew Mom wanted a little girl so bad, and she couldn’t-well, I told you about that.” She cleared her throat, paused and then went on.

“So…finally, I ran away, too. In a way. I was seventeen when I met Duncan, and he was so strong, so protective…and I thought, Here’s somebody who’ll take me away from here, and Clay can’t ever touch me again. So, I…”

“You married him.” He heard the harshness in his voice but couldn’t seem to make it softer. “Did he-your husband-did he know?”

She nodded and brushed absently at her cheek. Her voice became a whisper. “I told him on our honeymoon. He’d figured out I wasn’t…you know…so I had to tell him. At first he seemed okay with it-sweet, even. Angry, but not at me. I thought. But then, when I got pregnant, he started acting so jealous, possessive, like he didn’t trust me. He actually doubted Daniel was his child. And that’s…when he started…”

“Hitting you.”

“Yes.”

“My God.” He discovered he was shaking. Shaking with a rage that demanded violence, a primitive rage that wanted to smash, break, kill. He shook because what was required of him instead was tenderness. “Brooke…” He wanted to hold her, wrap her in his arms and stroke her hair and kiss away her tears. But in his fractured state, he was afraid to touch her. “You do know none of it was your fault?”

She nodded…drew a long, shuddering sniff. “In here I do-” she touched her temple “- in my grown-up head, I do.” Then her chest. “But in here…I don’t know. Sometimes there’s this person in here, inside me, this little girl, and she feels…ashamed and dirty and scared-” Her voice broke, and a huge shudder ran