Cole Cameron's Revenge

"Cole asked me to look after you," Ted said quietly.

To this day, she hated herself for the way her foolish heart had jumped at those words.

"Did he?" she whispered, then answered her own question. "No. No, he didn't. Cole doesn't give a damn about me. He proved it by leaving without so much as a goodbye. He never even tried to get in touch with me, right after the night we'd the night we'd-

"Faith." Ted stood up. "My brother did what he had to do."

"Oh, yes," she said, rising to her feet. She gave a quick laugh. "He certainly did."

"And so will you, if you're half the woman I think you are. You'll marry me, take the Cameron name, raise your baby as a Cameron-"

"And what about you?" She stared at Ted in bewilderment. "Assuming I were to agree to such an insane thing-which I won't-but if I did, what would happen to your life? I-I'd never live with you as a wife should. Never, no matter how-"

"I know that. And I wouldn't expect it." Ted cleared his throat. "I'm going to... I'm going to trust you with something. Something you should know." He swallowed hard. "I've ..I've never been interested in women. Not the way a man should be."

The truth took a long moment to sink in. When it finally did, Faith stared at him, speechless.

"Nobody knows," he'd said quickly, "not even Cole. And nobody ever will, not in Liberty. I'll be an exemplary husband. And, I promise you, I'll love Cole's child as if it were my own. Just don't make this baby pay for what you feel toward my brother."

"I hate your brother," she'd said, and despite everything, the enormity of the lie had clutched at her heart.

"But you don't hate your baby." Ted had flashed the gentle smile she'd come to know so well over the ensuing years. "You'll be doing me a favor, letting me enjoy a child I'd never otherwise have. No, don't say anything. At least agree to think it over."

She'd thought it over, trying to concentrate on the logic of it instead of on the pain of her broken heart. Then, one morning her mother found her retching into the toilet. She whispered the question Faith had feared for weeks, and Faith nodded her assent.

"Your father mustn't know," her mother had said, trembling. "You'll have to do something, Faith, but not in this town. You'll have to do it far away from here."

A day later, she'd phoned Ted and accepted his proposition.

They'd been married at Town Hall while her mother stood by sniffling into a fistful of tissues. Ted put a thin platinum band on her finger, kissed her cheek and moved her into his house. He sent Cole a letter telling him about the marriage, but Cole never replied. And Isaiah never said a word to her, right up until his death.

Neither did anyone else in town, but she saw their knowing smiles. When she began to show, their smiles grew more obvious. She knew people were counting the months and assuming she'd managed to snare a Cameron in the oldest way possible.

"Don't mind those busybodies," Ted would say when she'd come home from the market or the library with her face red and her temper high. "Just go on with your life."

She had. And, once Peter was born, her days were filled with the sweet joy of caring for him. He was the love of her life, the one good thing Cole had given her, and when Ted suggested finding Cole to tell him he had a son, Faith's "no" was adamant. Cole hadn't wanted her; why would he want to know he had a son?

"I don't ever want him to know about Peter," she'd said. "Promise me that, Ted."

Ted had promised, though reluctantly. "It's wrong," he'd say. "A man has the right to know he's a father."

Now, turning onto Main Street and pulling into the lot behind Sam Jergen's law office, Faith thought again, as she had so often in the past, that fathering a child was easy. Raising one was the hard part although the truth was, Ted hadn't been all that involved in raising Peter. He had his own life but he'd always been good to her and to her son. Thanks to that goodness, she could look forward to a fresh start for the two of them.

Damn. There was a car, a shiny black Jaguar, parked under the only shade tree. It gave her a jolt to see it, considering the memories swirling through her head. When Cole daydreamed about their future, he used to say that someday he'd trade his Harley for a Jaguar...

She shut off the engine.

Why was she wasting time thinking about Cole this morning? The past was dead. The future was all that mattered.

The day was heating up. She could feel the asphalt give under her shoes as she walked across the parking lot. A merciful blast of frigid air enveloped her as she stepped inside the marble foyer of the old building. Five to nine, said the big clock on the wall. She was right on time.