Love by Association

“You’d be great at it,” she told him without hesitation. Which made him a bit angry. For no good reason.

“I’m always going to see danger and do whatever it takes to prevent it from happening. To their detriment.”

It’s what he’d done with Julie. Instead of building her up, giving her the strength to face a tough court battle, he’d agreed to take the safest way out and sign those damned papers.

“A parent’s job is to see the dangers and prevent them,” she said with a note of bitterness to her voice that he hadn’t heard before.

And he thought about what Julie had said about the night the two of them had spent together. About how Chantel had cried over the death of her friend.

But what would that have to do with parents?

“You sound as though you’re speaking from experience.”

He’d tried, several times, to talk to her about that night she’d spent with Julie. She’d distracted him with sex. Every single time.

And he’d let her.

Because...they were only together for a while. She was leaving.

Even though he wasn’t happy feeling out of control, these had been the happiest weeks of his life...

“My stepfather tried to have sex with me when I was fourteen.”

The words fell so baldly, so unemotionally, on the wind, he was left feeling as though he was watching from afar. Seeing a woman in a movie.

Until he felt the rage. The need to find the guy and wrap his fingers around his neck...

“You said ‘tried.’” He focused on the facts.

“He came into my room and pulled me up out of my desk chair. It wasn’t late, but my mother had a migraine and was in their room, asleep.”

Money, privilege, didn’t mean safety. It didn’t mean trust. To the contrary. Money gave you the power to do whatever you wanted and get away with it.

He hadn’t realized her parents were divorced or that her mother had remarried.

And didn’t like the feeling of not knowing such an elemental thing about her. Even after their almost four weeks together.

He couldn’t stand there and let an unknown man walk into fourteen-year-old Chantel’s room and do nothing about it. He wasn’t made that way...

“I tried to scream, but he had his hand over my mouth before I could get more than a squeak out. He ripped my blouse open.”

She was facing the ocean. Colin wanted to pull her more tightly to him, to keep her safe from the evil that lurked everywhere, but he let his arms drop as he stepped up to the rail beside her.

He understood now why she was able to reach Julie when he could not. They were kindred souls.

And he felt helpless again. As helpless as he’d felt the night his baby sister came home to him completely broken.

“He grabbed me. And it hurt,” Chantel said in that same strong monotone. “He turned me around and told me what he was going to do to me. I’ve never been as angry as I was in that minute.” She turned her head to look at him. “I didn’t think, I just spun around so fast he lost his grip. I hurled my knee up as hard as I could and ran for my mother.”

There was more. He could see it in her eyes. “Mom didn’t believe me at first. Not until I didn’t come home for days and the bastard showed no signs of caring that I was gone. Then she realized that when he’d told her I’d hit on him, he’d been the one who was lying. She’d believed him at first. Believed that I’d hit on him. You’d never betray your child, Colin. You’d be a parent your child could always count on. In the end, that’s all that matters.”

He wasn’t sure she was right—that protection was all that mattered—but he wanted to believe she was.

Wanted everything about her to be true. Including his love for her.

* * *

SHE HAD TO get out. The words were a litany to Chantel as she worked her shifts Tuesday and Wednesday. The stuff with her stepfather...she couldn’t believe she’d told Colin. Couldn’t believe she actually remembered in such detail. Or that she felt so...strongly...about it.

She and Daniel were on days through Thursday. She had Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Long enough to get through the gala.

Have a day to deal with the fallout.

And be back to work on Monday.

Her time with Colin was coming to a close one way or another. Whether she and Julie and Leslie were successful Saturday night or not, she couldn’t keep pretending.

She’d never told anyone, not even Jill, the full extent of what had happened that night in her bedroom—how close she’d come to being another statistic. Why in the hell she’d poured it all out to Colin, she had no idea.

They’d been on his boat for a romantic dinner. But his talk about not being a good dad had reminded her what Julie had said about saving Colin from himself by giving him a chance to put Smyth away instead of signing away his right to do so.