Her peaceful mood vanished, and he wanted to kick himself. “Oh, yeah? Who do I have to kill?” She kept it light, but he knew their few moments of amity had disappeared.
“Anyone who comes after you.”
“And is anyone coming after me? I thought they were more interested in you. I was just a way they thought they could get to you. Whoever the hell ‘they’ are.”
“It worked,” he said shortly. He took a left turn, heading down a narrow path between fields of tall grass. A tractor had gone before him, so his path wouldn’t be noticeable following the heavier tread of the tractor tires. At the end, about half a mile down, he’d reach the river that ran through this rare, untouched piece of countryside. The crossing was a couple of miles farther down. It looked so bad even Indiana Jones wouldn’t have tried it, but there was no other access to the place. The fast flowing rush of the river was too deep everywhere else.
“Why?” She asked it like she didn’t really expect an answer, and she wasn’t getting one.
“I said five questions,” he said. He didn’t want to get her riled up—when she got mad he got mad, and when they both lost their tempers he put his hands on her, and then they were lost.
She wasn’t particularly ruffled by his response. “That was question number four.”
“Then I answered it.”
“Not satisfactorily.”
He grinned. “I didn’t satisfy you? Now that surprises me. What were those interesting sounds you made? Something between the yowl of a bobcat and the scream of a peacock. Not that there are many peacocks in Texas.”
He’d pushed it too far, and he realized he’d done it deliberately. She sat up straighter, her body tight with tension, and Merlin rose, his instincts responding to hers. “I guess we’ll never know, since you aren’t going to be hearing those sounds ever again.”
“Oh, you never can tell,” he said lazily. “You might find someone you want to get it on with while you’re still being guarded by the Committee. You’re noisy enough that if I’m in the same building, I’ll hear it.” Funny how he didn’t like that idea at all.
“Despite what you know of me, I don’t tend to fall into bed with men at the drop of a hat.” Her voice could have frozen anything, even the steamy Texas evening.
He said it before he could think twice. “What about the year after I left you? I counted nineteen, but I might have missed one or two . . .” His voice trailed off when he saw her face, and he wanted to kick himself so damned hard he wouldn’t be able to walk for days. “Sorry,” he muttered, before he could help himself.
The damage was done. It was a good thing, he told himself. Her shattered expression was as good as any brick wall between them.
“You didn’t miss any,” she said in a hollow voice. “It took me a while to come to my senses, and I didn’t realize how many there were until a couple of years later. I couldn’t bear to think about it for a long time. I still don’t like to remember, but I should. I need to remember so I’ll never get so broken, so needy, again. Sex doesn’t fix anything; it couldn’t push you out of my system and make me forget.” She turned to look at him. “I take it you were spying on me. Do you have any interesting videos you could put on the Internet?”
In fact, he did. It was a mistake, and he’d watched it once. Then he had taken his laptop and thrown it against a wall, destroying it. He’d thought it would help him let go. Seeing her in another man’s arms had made him furious, seeing the desolate look on her face had almost sent him after her, until he remembered what being around him would do to her. He’d made sure all copies were destroyed, and there was no
reason she had to know one had ever existed. “Of course not,” he said.
She had almost the same expression on her face now as she’d had in that fucking video as she lay beneath a man who wasn’t him. Shattered. Empty. He’d betrayed her, once again. Good, he reminded himself. It was a good thing.
She slowly unfastened her seat belt. “I’m going to lie down for a little while,” she said. “Wake me when we get there.”
“We’re five minutes away.” He didn’t want her to go, he wanted to make things better, but he didn’t know what to say.
“That’s good,” she said in a dull voice, rising and moving past him into the small cabin of the RV, Merlin trotting happily behind her.
Leaving the world’s worst bastard alone in the driver’s seat, driving into nowhere.
Chapter Fifteen
She didn’t cry. At first Evangeline had wanted nothing more than to get away from him before he saw how raw his words had made her. She expected to fall on that bunk and bury her face in the pillow and weep, and then face him again with the calm expression that drove him crazy.
There were no tears. She wanted to throw up, as that sick, desperate feeling filled her again, reminding her of that horrible year. She could see them, smell them, hear the mindless buzz of their lame come-ons. She’d never gone to bed sober, not with any of them, but it still didn’t wipe out the snippets of memory, and her stomach churned with disgust. Disgust with them, disgust with the situation, most of all disgust with herself. She thought she’d made peace with it, but just a few words from Bishop and she was an angry little ball of shame once more.
She felt Merlin’s nose nudge her, and he made a soft whining noise of support. She laughed, a weak, rusty sound, and slung her arm around his neck, burying her head in his fur. “You don’t think I’m terrible, do you, baby?” she murmured, low so that Bishop couldn’t hear her. “I was just hurting so badly, and I was trying any way I could to feel better.” Her voice almost broke on that one, and she couldn’t decide whether throwing up or weeping was a better choice. Stoic non-reaction was what she should aim for. Bishop couldn’t know how he got to her. Couldn’t know that deep inside she was just as weak and stupid for him as she’d been five years ago.
She felt the camper tip and rumble over something that could scarcely be called a road, and then move through water, and she knew a sudden panic. Her cousin had died when his car had been swept away in a flood, and she’d always been nervous about vehicles and water ever since. Then again, if the Winnebago was carried away in a flood it would solve all her problems.
She sat up, looking out the narrow window beside the bunk. It was sunset, and she could see a farmhouse in the distance; it looked like the Bates Motel—derelict and depressing. It was probably the Taj Mahal inside, she thought grumpily. At least he’d promised a separate bedroom, which had somehow felt like a slap in the face. He didn’t want to get involved with her any more than she did with him, and he wasn’t hindered by foolish emotions. In his case it was simply lust, something he could control.
So could she. She could control everything about herself until she got away from him. Then she could let go, scream and rail and throw things, get rid of everything she had ever kept locked tight inside her, and he wouldn’t know what he did to her, how he made her mixed-up and crazy and fragile and furious. How she still loved him.