His features grimacing from her pointed barb, he set his glass down on the brick mantelpiece behind him and turned back, determination written across the strong planes of his face. Katie stifled a sigh. It didn’t look as if belligerence could distract him from his goal.
“Tell me, Katie.”
Katie screwed up her courage. She really wanted to be able to get through this. But what had happened to her was so private. Still so horrendous when she was forced to think about it. And he had upset her so badly tonight her nerves were shattered into tiny pieces.
She took a shuddering breath and tried, “It was in high school, I—I—”
Her words came to a painful stop and she looked up from her hands folded in her lap. Against her will, her eyes flooded with tears again and she shook her head. Her gaze landed on him, and she sat quivering on the chair, shaking her head. “I can’t. Please, Zach—I can’t. Don’t make—”
Her voice came to a sudden halt as he left the wall and crossed the room toward her. The look on his face was equally pained, and as upset as she was, it never crossed her mind to think he meant to hurt her.
He dropped to his haunches in front of where she sat. “It’s okay. Don’t say anymore. I’ve upset you enough for one night.”
Zach reached across and wiped a single tear from her cheek. He’d upset her enough for one night? Hell, he’d upset her enough for a lifetime. Guilt lacerated him and he wanted to kick his ass for forcing that damn kiss on her tonight.
And then what she’d said pierced through the fog in his brain. High school. High school meant Redwood Falls. Who the hell would have hurt her from their hometown? The idea was almost ludicrous, but he never doubted her for a minute. Rage filled him, and he knew he would find out the truth and someone would pay. They’d pay, and then they’d pay some more and then they’d pay for the rest of their life.
And then an even darker thought came to his mind. A memory. The very first time he’d kissed Katie. Forced a kiss on Katie. The memory of that night long ago, a night when Katie had been there for his sister. After Hannah had fallen asleep that night, Zach had forced Katie into the study and interrogated her. Interrogated her, scared the crap out of her, and forced a kiss on her.
Guilt stabbed him in the gut. She’d only been eighteen.
And now he had to know. Had the attack already happened? Had he abused her that night so soon after she’d been truly traumatized?
He sucked in a cleansing breath and attempted to speak steadily. “When you were eighteen, when you used to visit Hannah—the night in the study, do you remember that night? That night when I was so pissed off, when I kissed you—” He cleared his throat. “Had it already happened?” He waited for her answer, already hating himself. He hadn’t been gentle with her that night. He’d been angry, and she’d been an easy target.
“Yes,” her answer was damning in its simplicity and Zach felt such a rush of self-loathing that he didn’t think he’d recover from it. That long ago night … she’d only recently been through hell and then he’d forced her into that room and terrorized her even more by kissing her, holding her against her will.
And still more damning … she was here now against her will.
Katie watched as he dropped his head, but not before she saw the pain that radiated from his eyes. A masculine hand reached out and gripped the arm of the chair she sat in as his other hand reached out and entwined long fingers through hers, gripping her tightly until she saw his knuckles turn white.
His head stayed down, and she heard his harsh, ragged breathing as he tried to work through whatever new anxieties were rolling through him.
His shoulders slumped in a dejected pose and a heavy lump rose in her throat as she realized the agony he was feeling because of his past actions toward her.
Of its own volition, her hand came up and sank into his hair. She tightened her palm over the top of his head and tried to transmit whatever strength or comfort she could.
Zach felt it the moment her hand came to rest on his head. The small act of forgiveness or concession or acceptance or whatever she meant it to be pierced the armor surrounding his anguished soul and he raised his head and looked into the green eyes still bright from recent tears.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
Her lips lifted in a tiny, mirthless quirk. “I know you didn’t,” she agreed softly.
His fingers tightened around hers. “Thank you for that.”
“I’m sorry if I overreacted. Earlier, outside.” Her words were softly spoken and quiet, and she’d never seemed quite as feminine to him as she did in that moment.
He shook his head. “You didn’t. Your reaction was perfectly understandable now that I know.” A new comprehension of the world Katie had been living in sank into his psyche and he suddenly had a new grasp on the entire dynamics of their interactions from the past. His understanding had always been skewed and he’d never even known what he’d been up against.
Zach’s stomach clenched as he forced himself to say the next words; the words that had to be said if he wanted to remain a decent human being. “I’m going to take you home tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened, and a tear slipped down her cheek, but she remained silent, studying him intently.
He tried to explain through the conflict roiling around in his gut. “I have no words for the way I’m feeling right now. All I’ve really ever wanted was you— you know that, right?” Her eyes were bottomless pools of dark-green liquid as she listened to him and he continued, “I’m going to have to come to the understanding that it’s my due in life to suffer … suffer without you. I want to kill the person who hurt you, yet I’ve probably hurt you more. There’s no excuse for the way I’ve treated you, but if it makes you feel any better, God is punishing me for it now. I want to keep you forever, but I have to take you home tomorrow. I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you. I know you probably can’t believe that, but it’s true. Katie, please believe me when I tell you that I never knew … what happened to you. I’ve been rough on you, and there’s no justification for that, even if you hadn’t gone through … what you went through.”
“Zach—” she began, with her heart in her eyes.
“Don’t say anything. I don’t deserve anything from you, unless you want to scream and hit me. That, I deserve.”
She shook her head softly, denying that he was speaking the truth.
“I’m taking you home tomorrow, and I’ll do just what you said. Your parents will get a new loan agreement, and trust me; they’ll find the payment schedule easy to maintain. That’s the least I can do. You can go back to Redwood Falls for the summer, or Dallas, if that’s where you want to be. And then you’ll be able to go back to teaching in the fall and I’ll stop hounding you. I swear to God, I’ll stop harassing you.” At the look in her eyes, another slice of guilt and pain ripped through him. “I swear to God, I’ll never hurt you again.”
She held his eyes as a conduit of emotions vibrated between them. He leaned in and placed a soft, gentle kiss on her forehead and lifted his lips away from hers before she had time to react. His voice was low and controlled, “Go up to bed, baby. You need some sleep and I … I need to get drunk.”
She looked as if she wanted to say something but she didn’t; she stood to her feet, unconsciously graceful, and walked to the door. She paused and looked back at him for just a second, and then she left the room on silent feet. Zach slumped into the chair she had just vacated. His hand scrubbed over his face in agitation and landed at his temple. He was quickly developing a stress headache. He wanted and needed the story of what had happened to her but didn’t know if he’d ever get it. Being confronted with her past, her problems, her personal demons, was like a cold spray of water in the face. He had a burning ache to kill someone that would nag him for the rest of his life. He put those thoughts on the back burner and focused on Katie.
Nothing he ever did with Katie Turner was right. He’d never made one correct move in all the years
he’d been chasing her. He’d fucked up, every time. He closed his eyes and shook his head at his own stupidity.
Why should tonight have been any different?
****
The next morning, Zach was suffering from a hangover that he knew he deserved. They had both slept late, and now Katie was moving around the kitchen, as silent as a wraith, preparing coffee and gathering a few of her personal items that had been strewn about.
He sat on a dining room chair and silently contemplated her, the more time he spent thinking about what he’d done and the way he’d treated her making him feel lower than the lowest slime. His hand shook as he popped open the ibuprofen bottle and swallowed down three pills, the chalky, medicinal taste blending with the coffee and making him grimace.
He was watching Katie with a knot in his stomach the size of a grapefruit as she folded a kitchen towel when his cell phone rang. He picked it up, but it was an unknown number to him. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean he couldn’t answer it. His business demanded that he answer all calls. “McIntyre,” he announced into the phone.
“This is Josh Turner. I need to speak to you.”
As the aggressive announcement resonated in his ears, Zach’s stomach muscles tightened in reaction and an internal stream of obscenities vocalized in his brain. Goddamnit, son-of-a-bitch, motherfucker, this couldn’t be good.
The other man’s voice was pissed, and Zach glanced at Katie before standing up and moving to the far side of the living room where she couldn’t hear his rebuttals to the confrontation that he knew was coming. Zach recognized that this conversation was going to be about Katie, but he had to make sure and besides, he needed something to break the ice. “All right. Hannah okay?”
“She’s fine. This doesn’t concern my wife.”
Zach closed his eyes briefly, before opening them again and looking out over the Gulf of Mexico, but without seeing the blue water or white foam of the waves crashing against the shore. So, the other couple was married now. A week had passed since he’d seen his sister, and Zach needed to remember that the man he spoke to was now his brother-in-law. “How can I help you?”
“You need to listen up. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt time and time again. And the last thing I want to do is to upset my wife. I just found out about the note you hold on our property. We’ve got the money to pay it off, which we’ll do this afternoon, but that’s beside the point. I want to know why you extended the loan. For that matter, I want to know what your motivation was for offering the loan in the first place.”
Son-of-a-fucking-bitch. This was deteriorating from bad to worse. From the questions he asked, Zach knew that Josh Turner had made him. The other man knew exactly what his motivation had been when he’d extended the loan. Zach glanced across the room and saw that Katie had taken a seat at the kitchen table and was surreptitiously watching him. He lowered his voice to make sure she couldn’t hear. Zach took in a lungful of oxygen and prepared to try to set things right. “I’ve done a lot of things the wrong way in the past. It’s too late for apologies, but I suppose you deserve a truthful answer. I did the things I did because of Katie—”
“Goddamit!”
The explosion that cut off his words didn’t surprise Zach. He deserved what he was getting and attempted to set it right. “You need to know—”
“Where the fuck is she?”