Half Moon Hill (19 page)

When her cheeks pinkened but her expression appeared more aroused than embarrassed, he gave a small laugh. “You gonna picture that in your head when you lay down to sleep tomorrow night?”

She flashed something between a smirk and a grin. “Maybe.” Then they rested in cozy, companionable silence for a moment before she said, “I’m glad you came here.”

He thought back to earlier, to the mental meanderings that had led him over tonight. “I . . . wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But . . . damn, couldn’t get you off my mind.”

“That’s nice to know,” she said with another playful, sexy grin, “but that wasn’t what I meant. I meant I was glad you came here, to my woods, to Half Moon Hill. It’s made my life . . . richer. And a hell of a lot more interesting than it was before.” She finished on a light giggle that somehow produced a soft twinge in his groin.

“How’d
you
end up here again?” he asked. They’d talked about it before, sort of, but he still didn’t really feel he knew the answer. It had something to do with getting away from Mike, but that just didn’t seem like enough to make a vibrant girl like Anna come to such a remote spot.

And when she met his gaze and hesitated, he knew she was thinking about giving him a more thorough version of the answer, but he could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“You can tell me,” he said. And then he cracked a small grin. “After all, who am I gonna tell?”

She laughed over that—but then the gravity of the moment returned and she said, quietly, “Finding out you’re not who you thought you were, and that your mother definitely isn’t who you thought
she
was—” She stopped, sighed. “It’s like suddenly belonging . . . nowhere.”

“But the Romos love you more than anything. They never stopped loving you.”

She nodded, then swallowed visibly, and he sensed what an emotional topic this was for her. “I know, and I love them, too. But they have this whole history together that I don’t have
with
them. And to know I was the source of so much pain for them . . . is tough to bear sometimes. Though the hardest part isn’t about them.”

“What is it then?” he asked.

“It’s . . . about my mom—my other mom, the one who abducted me.” She stopped then, shook her head. “God, sometimes that still sounds so weird to say. Because I loved her, you know? She had a lot of problems, and that made problems for me, too, but I loved her—and it’s difficult to reconcile that the mother who loved me was also someone capable of . . . stealing me. Taking me from the family where I belonged. Uprooting me from all I knew. I’m glad I don’t remember much about that time—and I guess I blocked it out—but it’s just hard to think of her being willing to put me through that, to take me from people who loved me, who gave birth to me—you know? I’ve just recently figured out that her lie has made it . . . hard for me to trust in people, hard to let myself count on them. But I’m getting better at that.”

Duke only nodded, because there seemed little else to say. After all, what words of comfort existed for such a strange and horrible thing?

Next to him, she sighed, her dark hair fanning across the pillow like silk. Even in sadness, she was possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. “And another hard part is just . . . not really knowing who I am anymore. I mean, maybe that sounds simple—find out you’re a Romo, become a Romo. But it’s strange to know I’m not the same person I would have been if I’d been raised in Destiny alongside Lucky and Mike. And it’s hard to wonder . . . who I was supposed to be. It’s hard to know that if I hadn’t been abducted I’d probably be someone . . . better.”

At this, something inside Duke tightened painfully. “What do you mean, Daisy? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She swallowed again and he felt her discomfort with the subject. And yet she went on, sharing it with him. “If I’d been raised here and never left I’d be . . . Amy. Or Jenny. Or Sue Ann. I’d wear pretty dresses and bend over backwards helping people out. I’d know how to bake, and maybe even sew. I’d know why my stupid cat follows me around meowing all the time,” she said, adding a roll of her eyes to that one. “I’d just be . . . more like what they all expected. And instead, I’m this person they don’t really know, this person who doesn’t dress the same, or act the same. And I just don’t get the cat thing,” she said, sounding almost exasperated.

But he had no idea what she was talking about. “The cat thing?”

“Everybody here loves their cats. And their dogs, too, I’m sure—but Amy has foisted cats on everyone and they’re all totally into their cats now. Even Mike. Even Lucky.”

Duke nodded slightly, head still on a pillow, facing her. “Yeah, now that you mention it, Lucky does seem pretty into that cat. He always tries not to let it show when people are around, especially other bikers, but I know what you’re saying.”

“So I’m just . . . not necessarily what they want me to be. And the thing is . . . I’ve always liked myself. I mean, maybe some of my confidence was just about being brave and acting like I had it all under control so I could
have
it all under control—but some of it was real. And now . . . well, maybe I don’t always feel quite as good about myself as I used to. I’m not as perfect as everyone else in Destiny. And I never will be.”

Duke hated the dejected look on her face and could hardly believe what he was hearing. So he just gave it to her straight. “Daisy, that’s the craziest load of crap I’ve ever heard.”

Her jaw went slack, her eyes wide. “Huh?”

He narrowed his gaze on her, trying to think how to explain what he meant. “Look, you’re fucking beautiful. And amazing.”

She still appeared just as confused. “I am?”

“You’re smart, you’re sassy, you’re funny as hell, you don’t let anybody push you around, and you know how to take care of yourself. So who cares if you don’t know how to bake a pie? Your cobbler was pretty damn good, though. And who cares if you aren’t a carbon copy of every other chick in town? You do your own thing and I dig that, baby. I like that you don’t try to be like everybody else. I like pretty much everything about you if you want to know the truth. And you make a pair of cutoff jean shorts damn sexy, by the way.”

Next to him, her expression slowly changed, and he saw some light in those gorgeous brown eyes again. And even if he’d said a little more than he’d meant to, he was glad if it made her see that she was incredible just the way she was and that she didn’t need to apologize to anyone for it.

She sounded uncharacteristically bashful when she said, “Thank you, Duke. That means a lot to me.” But he guessed he was learning there were a lot more sides to Anna Romo than he ever would have suspected.

“Well . . . you’re welcome” was all he came up with in reply.

“So anyway,” she said, “my big solution to all of this was . . . run away to Half Moon Hill. I didn’t know it was running at the time—it seemed like a good idea. And I’m comfortable here. But like I said, you’ve made it more interesting. And better.” The last part came in a shy sort of whisper that kind of turned his heart inside out.

Duke didn’t answer—he didn’t know what to say. He’d probably already said too much. And after all, an hour ago in the woods, he’d been telling himself all the reasons he couldn’t let himself get any closer to her, and just because he’d come here anyway didn’t mean he suddenly felt differently about that. He didn’t know
how
he felt on that score—it was all too damn complicated.

“Your turn,” she said then.

And his gut tightened. “Huh?”

“I still don’t really know why you’re living like a vagrant in my woods. And in one way, maybe it’s none of my business. But in another way, it is. And I just spilled my guts to you, on your request. So what’s driven you to such extremes, Duke?”

Duke knew he could just not answer her. And that would probably be wise. After all, one reason he liked the woods was that it got him away from people. People who wanted to ask him stuff, and find out how he was doing, and try to make him feel better. Because it all just made him think about what had happened—and that was what he didn’t want to do.

But she’d just bared her soul to him. And the night was quiet—the records downstairs had quit playing at some point and now all that remained was the gentle noise of crickets outside. And they were all alone here, far away from the rest of the world. And though he’d never been the most open guy, if there was ever a time or a place when it felt . . . safe to be open, this was it.

“I’ve . . . been through some shit, Daisy.”

“I know,” she told him.

But did she? Could she know? She could only know what Lucky had probably told her—she couldn’t know all of it, or about the hole it had left inside him.

“Lucky ever tell you much about the Devil’s Assassins?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Only that it was the biker gang you were in together in California.” She lowered her voice. “And that you had to do bad things.”

Duke didn’t like thinking about those days much, either—he and Lucky had both worked hard to leave that misspent part of their lives far behind—but . . . “At least then, I felt I had some control. Don’t get me wrong—we lived on the edge every day, not knowing if we’d make some wrong move that would make it our last. But I still knew that whatever happened to me, I was ultimately responsible for it—I’d made it happen, one way or another.

“And I made some choices I’m not proud of, done things that have made it hard to sleep at night. But I was in survival mode then, and I always did what I had to do to keep myself as safe as possible—and to keep Lucky safe, too.”

“He told me you saved his life once.”

Duke nodded. “It was a bad night—the night we ran and left the DAs in our dust.” Should he tell her what happened? He wasn’t sure. It was a big thing—something that could make her see him differently, badly. But it was a part of his life, so . . . shit, he’d just say it. “We didn’t have any choice—we had to run after a bar fight where somebody ended up dead.” He paused, watched for a reaction on her face, but saw none. Tough cookie, his Daisy. And damn, he liked that. “Lucky suffered over that—but me, I saw it for what it was. You choose to live in an environment like that, you know you might not survive. The guy pulled a blade on Lucky, and I wasn’t gonna let
that
shit go down—so I hit him with a bottle. Then he turned on me and this time it was Lucky who hit him, with a big beer stein. We both did what we had to do, looking out for each other—that was all.”

Again, he waited for a reaction, and what he got this time surprised him even more. “You put yourself at risk to save him—thank you for that.”

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” he told her. “And see—to me, it all even made a weird kind of sense. You live by the gun, you die by the gun—and I knew, and the other guy knew, that any given day could end the way that one did. It was an ugly way to live, but at least I understood the rules. And then . . .”

His voice trailed off because his chest went tight. Hell, this still wasn’t easy. He shut his eyes. Kept them shut. Wished maybe she’d just forget the conversation and let them both fall asleep now.

But when he opened them a minute later, there she was, still waiting patiently for him to go on.

So he took a deep breath and tried to find the courage to face the one thing in the world that really scared him. And that had really
scarred
him, too. Not only on the outside, but on the inside.

He told her, “Then I let a friend die while I stood there and watched.”

“ . . . death was all around him . . .”

Gaston Leroux,
The Phantom of the Opera

Eleven

I
t was hard to meet her gaze after that, but he dug deep and found a little more courage and did it anyway. Though he wished they’d turned off that damn lamp now. This would be easier in the dark. Like in the woods. In the dark no one could see you.

When she spoke, her voice came soft, tentative—she clearly already understood the weight this held for him. “Lucky told me a little . . . about what happened to your friend. But . . . I don’t know much.”

Duke swallowed anxiously, hating his weakness. He hadn’t known he had that inside him—weakness—until the day Denny Bodkins had died.

“Denny was older than me—in his fifties. He had a big gray beard and the beginnings of a beer belly. He rode a Harley flathead that Lucky painted for him last year.” Lucky ran a thriving business painting motorcycles for a living. “Denny had Lucky airbrush a pair of dice on his gas tank—said he’d rolled the dice and come out on the winning side. Across the bar one night he told me he’d been into some bad shit when he was younger, but then he met Linda, his wife, and she turned that all around.”

Duke had been a little envious when Denny had told him the story—he couldn’t quite imagine how a woman’s love could have as big an impact as the one Denny had described, and though he’d never wanted to be tied down, he couldn’t deny that Denny was one of the happiest guys he knew.

“He and Linda didn’t meet until their forties, and to be honest, I’ll be damned if I could see what he saw in her. Don’t get me wrong—she’s a nice enough lady . . . but I just never saw what was . . . special about her. All I know is that when she’d walk into Gravediggers and Denny was already there, her smile lit him up like nothing I’d ever seen. Once he told me that she made everything right in his world.”

The corners of Anna’s mouth turned up slightly, and her eyes took on a soft, dreamy quality. “That’s sweet,” she said.

And yeah, it
had
been. But Duke couldn’t smile about it. Because he knew the rest of the story.

He took a deep breath before trying to finish it. “A bunch of us were on a big ride on a Sunday afternoon. It was the dead of winter, but it was one of those warm, sunny days that come out of nowhere, and it seemed too good to waste, so a bunch of us bikers called each other up, and we met at Gravediggers at noon that day. We headed down across the river at Portsmouth into Kentucky, then rode all the way to Cave Run Lake.”