Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)
What on earth? She frowned. “Rafe...” She started slowly, like she was speaking to someone who was confused. Because she was. “I never, ever asked you to leave your family. Or to be with me.”
“No, you just tell me we can’t be together, and the only reasoning you give, in your various ways, comes down to the fact that I’m a Colton.”
He wanted to be with her? He really wanted to be with her? By the looks of him, he’d spent a great bit of the night stewing about the fact that she’d told him the day before that she wouldn’t see him.
Because a Colton wasn’t used to being told no? Didn’t know how to accept a refusal?
Was it a matter of pride to him now?
Or did he really care?
“You being a Colton is what started our separation,” she told him, needing to get the words right. To help them both understand. “But it’s not what’s keeping us apart.”
Granted, she wouldn’t be happy living in a mansion. But then, he didn’t live in one. She’d never seen the house he’d built. On “their” land.
Because she’d meant that much to him.
But that was all beside the point.
“It’s you, Rafe, and, probably me, too,” she admitted. “Me, because I’m done. I’ve carried our love with me for decades, keeping it alive, only to find that all I was carrying was memories.”
“How can you say that? Look at us. We’ve been back in contact four days and have hardly been separated since. And let me tell you, lady, that’s not just because of the job we’re doing together. I didn’t hold you the other night because of the job. You weren’t crying because of the job. You didn’t climb down off that bed because of the job. And we most certainly didn’t make incredible love, nine times, because of the job.”
“You counted how many times we did it?”
And that mattered how in that moment?
She had to help him understand. Her sanity, and future happiness, depended on it. “We have a past, Rafe. A precious one that will always connect us and will always have the power to evoke emotions within us. But it’s in the past.”
“Because I’m a Colton.”
“No. Because you weren’t willing to fight for us, in spite of you being a Colton. Or me not being good enough for them. You let us go. Not just physically, but in your heart.”
She saw the second her words hit
home. It was like he’d been sucker punched. She stood there, physically watching reality dawn—in the drop of his shoulders, the shock in his gaze, the way the hand that had been outstretched to her dropped at his side.
It was almost done.
Chapter 22
Kerry was just getting ready to tell Rafe that the time had come for her to let him go from her heart, too, when there was another knock on her front door.
“What the hell!” She moved forward more quickly this time, but careful as always to take precautions. Another vehicle was out front, behind Rafe’s truck. A somewhat new-looking white sedan. A glance through the peephole showed her a woman she’d never seen before, middle-aged, with graying hair, looking strung out.
Motioning to Rafe to get back into the dining room, behind the wall, waiting until he’d done so, she slowly pulled open the door, her gun ready to aim and fire.
“Detective Wilder?” the woman asked.
With her free hand she pointed to the badge already hooked to her belt. “Yes.”
“My name’s Lavinia Alvin. Grant Alvin was my husband.” Looking more frightened than dangerous, the woman glanced behind her and, not sure she was making the right choice, Kerry let her in the house.
And then checked her for weapons the second she was in the door.
“I don’t blame you for being careful,” Lavinia told her. “I heard you’ve been asking around about your brother’s death this past year, even though it was ruled an accident,” she said. Standing in Kerry’s foyer in jeans and wrinkled T-shirt, she had her lower lip sunken in as she spoke, and her thin, shoulder-length hair hanging around cheeks that were marked with a couple of scabs. “Tyler died just like my husband did,” the woman said, surprisingly well-spoken.
Was Rafe listening?