Against their love.
Tears seeped out of her eyes and down to wet her pillow. She’d known they were coming. But had expected to be alone when they did.
They arrived silently. Fell without sound.
Right up until she sniffed. And then had to reach for a tissue. Because nothing happened the way it did in books or on television. Real life was messy. Bodies had to pee. Noses ran.
And romantic love didn’t always win.
“Come here.” A hand appeared up on her mattress. She stared at it. She couldn’t make love to him. Her heart wouldn’t survive intact. But that hand—it was Rafe’s hand, beckoning her. Like it had the first time he’d held her hand as a boyfriend, not just a friend. They’d been standing on opposite sides of a jumping cholla, a desert plant known to reach toward anything close to it and stab it with its needles. She’d just told him that she didn’t want to be his girlfriend and when he’d asked why, she’d said because she was afraid of how bad it would hurt if he ever left her. She purposely put that cactus between them, as though, if he tried to reach her, those needles would protect her.
He’d reached his hand out, rounding the cactus as much as he could without getting stung and told her, “Come here.” He’d promised her that day that he would love her forever. No matter what.
He’d also said that he’d never leave her.
A month later, he had.
“Come here,” he said again, sitting up this time.
“I can’t have sex with you.” He was an addiction she had to fight if she was ever going to be happy.
“I know.” He moved his hand closer. “Come here.”
In the dark, with her heart breaking, she needed him so badly. She reached out, took his hand, and when he tugged gently, she slowly left her bed and joined him on the mattress. He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say; she got that.
He just wrapped his arms around her, spooning her loosely, and held her that way until she felt her tears stop and she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Rafe woke up when Kerry’s phone rang. He was alone on the mattress. Had slept surprisingly well for all the tension coursing through him. The ringing stopped and Kerry’s voice came from the other end of the house. The bedroom door was open. By the smell of things, she’d already had her shower.
Had she slept at all?
The thought led him back to the sound of her tears the night before. They’d about done him in. Kerry had never been a crier. Not even when she fell and broke her arm and should have cried.
Not when he’d told her that he could never see her again.
But the night before, she’d cried.
Because of him.
He had to help her find her brother’s killer and get out of her life. Payne’s shooting—he’d look in Ace’s trunk as he’d told her he’d do, and then he had to be out of it. The rest of the Colton siblings were going to have to handle this one without him. Unless something required a board vote, of course. He’d always be there for that.
The Coltons had taken in a five-year-old orphan and made him one of them. He was in the will as an heir. They’d accepted him as family, albeit one step distant from the rest of them, and the debt he owed for that would never be repaid. Beyond that, he loved his job. And until Payne had been shot and Kerry had come back into his sphere, he’d been quite satisfied with his life. Happy, even.
Kerry’s voice had stopped. Meaning she was off the phone?
Pulling on the jeans she’d washed the night before, leaving on his T-shirt, and slipping sockless into the tennis shoes he’d worn the day before, he brushed his teeth, grabbed his stuff and headed out to the dining room.
“Lizzie’s on her way to escort you out to the ranch,” she said. “There’s been no sign of the vehicle that ran you off the road—which is bad, but good in that whoever he was, he’s off the road, at least. I’m thinking your theory that his aggression was meant as a warning, some kind of power control payback, could have been right. If that’s the case, he’s not going to jeopardize a multimillion-dollar business of running drugs or weapons or whatever, just to teach you a lesson.”
He nodded. Opened his mouth to say “good morning” and probably to tell her that he didn’t need an escort, but she just kept on talking.
“Dane called. The ballistics report was waiting for him when he got up half an hour ago. They actually got some trace off from the dings in your tailgate, and Lizzie and James found a bullet casing last night. They all match and the news isn’t good.”
In blue work pants again, a white shirt and with her gun back on her hip instead of under the
pillow she didn’t use, where she’d shown him she was putting it last night in case she was in a compromising position and he had to grab it, she sipped from a cup of coffee, not looking at him.