When Lightning Strikes

"You're wrong."

Lainie was so stunned that for a moment she couldn't speak. "But ..." Her voice was barely a whisper. "How .. . then?"

He gave a quick, almost undetectable shake of his head.

Silence fell between them. She knew she couldn't breach it, and that he wouldn't. They would sit this way forever, both feeling battered and alone, staring at each other, but seeing something else entirely.

She saw all her notes on Killian, strewn out across her desk. She'd charted and examined and written down every moment of his life, every aspect of his personality. She knew him?she thought?inside and out. But she was wrong. Somehow, she was wrong.

137

She looked at him. He was sitting stiffly, his face obscured behind a curtain of gray smoke. He was staring at her, but his eyes had a glassy, faraway look. Her words had opened a doorway to the past, and he'd fallen in.

With a start, she realized that she had no idea what he was thinking about, what he was remembering. Here was a man she'd created, invented, and now, impossibly, she had no idea what he was thinking. Or who he was.

What was happening here?

Suddenly he surged to his feet and kicked the chair away from him. It skidded across the floor and crashed into the wall. "Enough," he hissed, yan

king open the door and throwing his half-smoked cigarette outside.

She scrambled to her feet. "Killian, please, all I need is?"

"I don't give a shit what you need." He scowled at her. "Don't say anything else. You got it?"

At the anger in his voice her last tenuous thread of hope snapped. He wouldn't help her. There was none of the hero left in this villain she'd created. He was as hard and mean and bitter as the past she'd given him. She'd been a fool to think otherwise, to think, even for a second, that he would help her.

She fought the urge to sag to her knees again. Instead, forcibly, she lifted her head and stared at him. "I asked for your help, but I don't need it. I can leave here on my own."

"You haven't been paying attention, Lainie. I'm God here."

She laughed bitterly. "One of the benefits of surrounding yourself with fools and losers."

138

"I picked you up, didn't I?"

She pushed past him and strode to the door, reaching for the latchstring.

"They'll shoot you in the back if I give the order," he said softly.

She froze midstep. Her hand fell away from the rawhide strap. Slowly she turned around. "You wouldn't give that order."

"I already have."

She paled. "D-Don't do this. I have to get back to . . ."

His eyes narrowed. "To who?"

To her utter humiliation, she felt the tears again, stinging and hot. "Kelly," she whispered.

He frowned. "Who's Kelly?"

"My daughter."

"You're a motherT

She nodded without looking at him. "Yeah. I ... I don't want my baby to come home to an empty house." She lifted her gaze and implored him one last time with her eyes. "You know what that's like ... coming home to an empty house ... don't you, Killian?"