Falling for Her (19 page)

Not happening. He wasn’t going anywhere until he got to the bottom of whatever was going on with her. “Did our time together mean nothing to you then?” Low blow maybe, but a question he needed answered.

She stared hard at him for a moment, then her eyes softened. “It meant everything to me. You’ll never know how much, but I can’t stay in Pensacola, not if he’s found me. So, there’s no future for us. There can’t be, and I won’t drag you into this shit.”

“Too late. I’m here, and I’m not leaving, so you might as well tell me what’s going on.” His gaze zoned in on the bottom lip she chewed on, and he wished she wouldn’t do that.

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

No. “Depends on what you say.”

Her response was a long sigh, then she pushed up, went to her suitcase, and rummaged around in it. If she realized the view of her bottom she’d given him and where it led his thoughts, she’d probably slap him. He was a bad man to be thinking of making love to her when she was clearly upset and afraid. Pulling a sweater out, she wrapped it around her shoulders and tugged on it until it covered her breasts. The room wasn’t cold, so she was hiding herself from him. That only added to his anger.

With the sweater pulled around the top half of her, she sat on the only chair in the room, curling her legs under her. “Rodney stole seven hundred thousand dollars.”

“What?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
hat got his attention. God, she didn’t want to do this, but Sugar believed him when he said he wasn’t leaving until she explained. There were things she wouldn’t tell him though, only enough so he’d leave.

“I said Rodney stole seven hundred thousand dollars.” From the kindest woman she’d ever known.

Junior, having scarfed up the cheese and sausage treat, hopped onto Jamie’s lap and made three turns before curling up and sticking his nose under his tail. Masculine fingers she knew firsthand could make a woman forget her name stroked her cat’s fur, the sound of his purrs the loudest she’d ever heard from him. Really stupid to envy a damn cat, but she did.

She’d thought to never see Jamie again, yet there he was sitting on the bed of her motel room waiting for answers, and all she could think about was wanting his hands on her. Wanting him to do those magical things to her and bring her to that wonderful feeling again.

After he heard what she had to say, however, he’d never want to touch her again, a good enough reason to cry an ocean of tears. When he got his answers and walked out for the last time, she’d give herself permission to do just that. She pressed her hand over her heart, wishing it didn’t ache so badly.

The blue eyes staring at her hardened. “Sometime today would be good, or are you trying to come up with more lies?”

It was close, but she managed not to flinch. She had that coming, she supposed, but it still hurt. Resentment simmered at the coldness in the gaze he leveled at her. He didn’t know what she’d lived through and managed to escape from, so what gave him the right to judge her?

Inhaling a deep breath, she looked him square in the eyes. She’d
be damned if she’d cower in front of him. “Fine. You want to know my
sad story?” Unable to hold his gaze, she focused on Junior, still asleep on Jamie’s lap. “On my tenth birthday, my mother died suddenly, and nothing was the same after that. Unable to cope with her loss, my father went on a downward spiral, drinking heavily, gambling . . .
honestly,
I probably don’t know the half of it. He was a Charleston cop, had been an honorable one up ’til then, but he ended up getting fired. We lost our home, and he moved us into public housing.”

God, it was hard remembering that time in her life, watching her daddy turn into a man she didn’t recognize. “He rarely came home anymore, and it was too dangerous to leave the apartment so I took refuge in schoolwork. My grades were perfect, but there was no one home to care.” Why was she telling him that much? She could’ve gone straight to the theft, but the part of her that craved his respect wanted him to understand how she came to such lows.

“You’re going to pick that sweater apart if you keep pulling on it.”

She glanced down to see she was tugging on a loose piece of yarn, and not knowing what else to do with her hands, she clasped them tightly, resting them on her lap.

“Go on. Tell me the rest.”

Taking some comfort in the softening of his voice, she eyed the root beers, wishing she had one to soothe her dry throat. As if reading her mind, he reached for one and twisted the cap. Just as she was about to ask if she could have one too, he held it out.

“I’d bring it to you, but then I’d disturb my friend here.”

“Thanks.” She crossed the room and took the bottle, careful not to touch his fingers. How did one stop loving a man who didn’t want to wake up her cat? There must be a way, and she’d have plenty of time to puzzle out the answer in the days ahead.

“Where was I?” she asked after returning to her chair.

“There was no one home to care.”

She’d rather his voice didn’t sound so gentle, as if he cared. “Right. Well, it went along like that until I turned fifteen. For the first time since my mom died, daddy remembered my birthday and decided to treat me to a night out to dinner at . . .” Unable to resist, she let the moment draw out until Jamie lifted a brow. “Crazy Zollie’s Roadside Eats But There’s No Seats.” Turned out, that had been the only thing funny about that night.

Jamie’s lips twitched. “I’ll have to put that on my bucket list.”

Lips she’d thought would never smile again curved upward. She resisted the urge to touch her fingers to her mouth to know for a fact she was smiling. “That really was the actual name of the place, even had a hand-painted sign saying so. Crazy Zollie had an outdoor grill, and the tables were cement blocks piled atop each other with a wood plank across them. He claimed he tried picnic tables and chairs once, but people kept stealing them.”

It hadn’t mattered to her. All she’d cared about was that her father had remembered her birthday and was spending time with her. If she’d known the outcome of that night, however, she’d have begged to be taken anywhere else, or nowhere at all.

“So . . .” More than anything, she didn’t want to tell him the rest, would rather parade naked in front of a convention of Southern Baptists. “So, there we were, eating our pulled pork and Hoppin’ Johns when this man walked over to our standing-up table and asked if we’d mind if he joined us. There was only me and my daddy there before the man arrived, and there was another table he could’ve gone to.”

She set the root beer on the floor and hugged her knees. “I wish my father had said ‘yes, I do mind. It’s my daughter’s birthday, and I want her all to myself.’ But he didn’t. The next thing I wish is that I’d left, just started walking down the street and kept going. But I was Hannah Conley then, and Hannah was too dumb to recognize the evil in Rodney Vanders’s eyes when he looked at her.”

“So he fixated on you,
Hannah?
”

She jerked her gaze to his. “Don’t call me that. Hannah’s dead. Buried. Never coming back.” Hannah was no longer capable of facing the world.

“Good. I’ve grown used to Sugar, but help me understand why you feel you have to live a lie.”

Hearing her name spoken aloud after two years sent rogue-sized waves of regret flowing through her. So many things she could’ve done differently if she’d only known. Her only excuse was that she’d not understood how very clever the devil was.
I’m sorry, Mrs. Lederman. I’m so Goddamned sorry.

Stupid, stupid hot tears rolled down her cheeks despite her effort to stop them. Jamie wanted her to explain why she lived a lie, but how did she explain her part in a murder?

“Sugar?”

So she was Sugar again. But not for long. As soon as she got his interrogation over with and sent him on his way, she’d be Nikki Swanson. She decided Nikki would get lost somewhere in Arizona and never look at another man. They just weren’t worth it. You either hated them or loved them and either way led to heartbreak.

“Okay. I just need a minute.” She soaked in the sight of him, imprinted on her brain how his eyes had softened with the telling of her story so far, knowing that was about to change. He still stroked Junior’s chin and neck as if he knew exactly where a cat wanted to be worshiped.
I love you, Jamie Turner, even though you’re fixin’ to rip my heart out of my chest and stomp it to pieces.
Because he would, this man of honor who hated liars.

“Turned out Rodney took one look at me and decided I belonged to him no matter what I wanted. I didn’t understand that until it was too late. He and my father started talking, and before the night was over, Rodney Vanders, chief of police in a town his family had ruled with an iron fist for decades, offered my father a job. Daddy was thrilled to be back as a cop, a job he thought he deserved. Rodney isn’t stupid, not then and not now. He eased his way into our life, and when my father thought he hung the moon, Rodney asked for me as payment for all he’d done for us. My father agreed.” She waited for Jamie’s reaction. Did he think it was okay for a father to give his only daughter to a man who lusted after a girl not yet sixteen?

“Jesus.” Junior gave a little growl when Jamie’s fingers dug into his neck. “What . . . what kind of father . . .”

He seemed at a loss for words, and she could sympathize. Yeah, what kind of father? That Saint even uttered Jesus’s name told her how shocked he was. Well, he’d yet to hear the worst of it.

“Anyway, from then on, Hannah’s life was monitored by Rodney. Where she went, who she saw, who she talked to. Mostly, she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, or see or talk to anyone but him. She . . . she was weak and inexperienced and didn’t know how to say no to bad cop and bad cop. That’s what I call them, and if it had been me, Sugar, I would’ve told them both to go straight to hell and to drop dead on their way.” The tears stilled flowed, both from anger at having to lay herself open to Jamie and the remembering.

If she could somehow manage to curl up and die right then, she would.

Jamie had prepared himself to listen to her lies, and then he thought he would be able to walk away for the last time. Instead, the woman with the tears streaming down her cheeks broke his heart, and he was going nowhere.

He picked up Junior and moved him to the bottom of the bed. “Come here, Sugar.”

“But you haven’t heard the worst.”

“I don’t care.” And he didn’t. Whatever she told him next, he now understood she’d been the victim of a man who preyed on the people he was charged with protecting. Even worse, her own father hadn’t kept her safe from a pedophile. Sugar—she’d always be Sugar to him—had been a pawn in a game no young girl could understand, nor stop.

With the wariness of a kitten creeping up to a rottweiler that might eat it, she came to him and crawled onto his lap. Although he wanted to assure her he wouldn’t bite, he still wasn’t sure how he felt about her, nor what he wanted from her. That she was finally telling the truth, he believed. It was beyond his comprehension how a father could give his young daughter away. When he had a daughter, he’d love and protect her with every fiber of his being. He’d love her the way his parents had loved him.

“Tell me the worst,” he said after he had her safely tucked into his arms. He pressed his nose into her hair and inhaled the scent of her, one he’d recognize a hundred years from then. In this world or some other.

“I don’t want to.”

“Tell me anyway.” He didn’t imagine she did. If it was beyond what she’d told him so far, something to do with her involvement in stealing seven hundred thousand dollars, it would be a hard thing for her to admit. Had she been forced into it, or had she willingly participated? Afraid of the answer, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. They had come this far though, and he suspected the last part of the story was why she was running. Wrapping his arms around her, he waited for her to speak.

“Are ya sure you’d not just rather leave? Go back to Brown Jill, and forget you ever met me?”

With his lips pressed against the top of her head, he smiled against her hair on hearing her description of poor Jill. “I’m sure.”

The sigh she heaved pressed her breasts against his chest, and he willed his erection to go away . . . at least for now. Later? Depended on what she had to say.

“Damn you, Jamie Turner. I was supposed to be rid of you by now.”

There was no force to her words, and he didn’t take offense. “I got that when you disappeared. But I found you, didn’t I? That should tell you something.”

She lifted her head, and her eyes searched his as if looking for what he wasn’t saying. He wasn’t ready for such truths and lowered his gaze to her mouth. The one he was going to kiss if she didn’t start talking.

“All right. The worst is that Rodney stole seven hundred thousand from a very nice woman, Mrs. Lederman. I was the one who recommended the attorney when she wanted to change something in her will. The man was indebted to Rodney and would do anything Rodney asked. Hell, half the town owes him this favor or that, and the other half is too afraid to cross him. I suspected he was up to something bad, and I didn’t try to stop him. That makes me guilty, right?”

“Let me get this straight. Did Vanders tell you who to recommend?”

“Yes, he made me.” She clamped her teeth down on her lower lip, her eyes going distant, to some other time. “You remember I said he tried to drown me? He did it to make sure I understood his power over me and what he could do if I didn’t obey. At first . . . well, at first Hannah refused to go along, but she wasn’t strong, and when he showed her what he could do to her, she gave up.”

Jamie wondered if she understood how much she distanced herself from the girl she’d been, as if she couldn’t bear to think of herself capable of doing those things. Not that he blamed her from what he’d heard so far. She’d basically been a child, and a lonely, hurting one at that. If he had one wish, it’d be ten minutes in a room with Rodney Vanders, followed by another ten with her father.

Still, there had to be more to the story for her to feel so guilty. “Why is he so determined to find you, Sugar?” Her gaze fixated on the middle of his chest, and he lifted her chin. “Why?”

“Because I stole the money back. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t keep it. She didn’t know they’d changed her will, but she told me once where she wanted her money to go. So, I made sure it went to the right places. The Wounded Warriors because her only son died in Viet Nam, and two animal shelters because she loved animals.”