Kiss in the Dark (22 page)

Now she knew how wrong she’d been. “It wasn’t your
fault,”
she whispered, running her finger along his bottom lip. “It was nobody’s fault.”

A hard sound broke from his throat. And his eyes…
Dear God, his eyes. They were on fire. “It killed me seeing you with Lance, hearing you pledge your life to him, but I knew he was the better man.”

“He was a different man, Dylan. There’s no comparison.”

“He made you happy.”

“He made the scared little girl happy.”
The one who
didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps, not after
seeing her break heart after heart. Including her father’s. “He took care of her. But as that little girl turned into a woman…”

“What?” Dylan asked sharply. “As the
little girl turned
into a woman, what?”

“He…” It
was difficult to put their marriage into words.
They hadn’t
come together out of passion, but rather, common goals. “I don’t know. We drifted. You were right, you know. Last week in the car, when you said Lance went
his way, and I went mine.”

Dylan’s scowl darkened. “Then why didn’t you divorce
sooner?”

And come to me.

Beth heard the hoarse words as surely as though Dylan had spoken them aloud. “As crazy as it sounds, the vows we took meant something to me. I’d
sworn before family
and friends and God to make the marriage work for better or for worse and…”

“And you didn’t want to be your mother.”

The chill increased. “Maybe,” she admitted, surprised by the insight. “But we were …
content.
Our marriage be
came more of a partnership than anything else. We got along. We were friends.” She stepped
closer to Dylan,
needing his warmth, needing the man she’d just made love with to know the full truth.

“Last week you asked if I remembered the last time Lance and I made love.”

Dylan stiffened, his eyes going cold. “Now’s not the time—”

“We never
made love,”
she interrupted, pressing her body to Dylan’s. They’d rarely even slept together. “We
never shared what you and I always, always have.”

“Don’t lie—”

“He quit visiting my bed,”
she rolled right on,
finding liberation in the truth, “after we realized we’d
never make
a baby the old-fashioned way. And
I never invited him back.”

Standing there in the moonlight, Dylan stared at her like she’d suddenly started talking in tongues. “It used to eat me alive thinking of Lance going home to your bed every night. Now you’re telling me he didn’t?”

“It wasn’t like that between us.” Never had been. In
truth, she’d never quite understood why he’d asked her to
marry him in the first place. “He had someone else,”
she told Dylan.
“Someone whose bed he would visit.
”

Dylan lifted a hand to her face. “And you?”

She smiled at the way he was clearly bracing himself, at the way he tried to keep the emotion from his eyes. Silly man. Dylan St. Croix could no more hide what be
felt
than she could yank the sun from the sky.

“Only one,”
she told him.
“There’s only been one
man
in my bed, my dreams. In my heart.”

His gaze hardened, and she felt his body go rigid. “You,” she said as quickly as
she could. “Only you.”

He looked like she’d just slugged him in the gut,
rather than given him
a confession straight from her heart.

“Dylan, I—”

He crushed her in his arms before she could continue, pressing her against the warmth of his chest. The scent of sandalwood and desire killed her words, prompting her to hold him as tightly as he held her.
He was murmuring something against her hair, but above the beating of their
hearts, she couldn’t make out the
words.

“Kiss me,”
she whispered, lifting her face to his. And he did. His mouth came down on hers with the same urgency
she’d thrilled to nine years before. The same
urgency she’d awoken from in dreams, heart pounding, body damp.

The cramp hit without warning. She cried out, her hands immediately finding her stomach.

Dylan tore his mouth from hers. “Bethany?”

She stood there, stunned, trying to catch her breath. But then another pain lanced through her midsection, this one so
sharp she doubled over.

“Sweetheart, what’s the matter?”

She was still naked except for his shirt, and through the moonlight, she saw the trickle of red down her leg.

“The baby,”
she whispered,
looking up at Dylan. “The baby.”

“Sweet Jesus, no,”
he growled, then scooped
her into his arms and ran.

Chapter 13

«
^
»

Y
ou’re not
going to lose this baby!

The fierce vow
echoed through Beth long after Dylan rushed her to an emergency clinic in nearby Medford. She lay on the exam table and prayed, while Dylan held her hand. And prayed. She remembered little of the trip down the twisting mountain roads, only the way Dylan had kept talking, kept touching.

Now, a cold fear twisted through her. She’d been careless. Reckless. Drunk on desire, she’d put her baby at risk.
Again.

“The doctor should be back any minute. Can I get you anything?”

She looked at him and felt the ache in her chest deepen. His eyes were dark and wild, the lines of his face stark, the shadow on his jaw darkening. Even his closely cut hair
looked disheveled. Scratches and dried blood streaked his
chest and arms, bearing witness to the fact
he’d picked her
up and run into the pine forest without stopping to dress. Now he held her hand tightly, giving her strength and warmth.

But the chill deep inside wouldn’t go away.

“You should have someone look at those cuts,”
she
whispered, her mouth too dry for anything louder. “The one on
your shoulder looks pretty deep.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, much like that long-ago night when a few careless decisions had shattered their lives. In excruciating detail, she remembered that dark night on the side of a mountain road, the paramedics frantically tending to her
while violent cramps ripped through her body. And the blood. There’d been so
much of it. Hers. Dylan’s. She’d lain there cold and shivering, unable to look from the state trooper wrestling him to the ground.

“No,” he roared. “No!”

“Hold still, son. Don’t
make this worse than it already is.”

“You have to let me go to her! She’s pregnant, for God’s sakes. She’s carrying my child.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you dragged her into the middle of an ambush.”

“Sweetheart? What’s wrong?”

Beth blinked hard, bringing the stark lines of Dylan’s
face into focus. He held her hand in one of his, but somehow, he seemed to be retreating.

“C-cold,” she murmured. “So cold.”

He swore softly and glanced at the closed door, then slipped onto the narrow bed beside her. “I’ve got you,” he said, and though he held her against the solid warmth of his body, the distance between them seemed to
elongate.
“I’ve got you.”

“Mr. and Mrs. St. Croix?”
came a voice from the doorway.

“Dr. Burns.”
Dylan was on his feet and across the room before the
expressionless doctor took
two steps. “How is she?”

The older man pushed his glasses higher on his face and
glanced at his chart, then at Beth. “Your wife is fine, just a little overheated and
dehydrated.”

“And the baby?”
Dylan
and Beth asked simultaneously.

Dr. Burns
smiled. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “The
heart rate is strong and there are no signs of fetal distress.”

Tears spilled over, relief and joy and thanks rushing through her as swift and beautiful as the river they’d hiked that morning. “Dylan—”

But he was already there, by her side and pulling her into his arms. He held her
tightly, cradling and rocking, running
a hand up her back and into her tangled hair, while the other stretched across her stomach.

“Thank God,”
he
rasped over and over. “Thank God.”

Beth absorbed the feel of his arms around her, telling herself she was only imagining the distance before. Her world wasn’t shattering. Everything was okay. “Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for getting me here so fast.”

“I’d like her to take it easy for a few days,” Dr. Burns said, moving toward them. “No hiking or physical exertion.”

Dylan pulled back and turned to the doctor. “I’ll tie her to the bed, if I have to.”

Once, the rough-hewn words would have coaxed a smile or a shaky laugh from Beth. Instead, the cold chill of certainty pierced deeper.

Clearly startled, the doctor hurriedly closed the chart and rattled off several warning signs, then advised Beth to see her doctor in Portland upon her return. “Other than that, Mr. St. Croix, just take your wife home, make her comfortable, treat her like a queen.”

His wife. A queen.

The words tightened around Beth’s throat, her heart, but she didn’t correct the doctor.

Neither did Dylan. He merely agreed. “I will.”

* * *

Dylan watched her sleep. She lay in his bed, in his bedroom, in his house, but he couldn’t bring himself to slide
his
body next to hers. The need to stand guard tromped
over every other need that tried to surface. Bethany
didn’t
need to share a bed right now. She didn’t need a lover. She didn’t need to know the fire that burned in his gut. She needed rest and peace and the serenity she’d always sought.

In short, she needed what Dylan had never given her.

Take your wife home, make her comfortable, treat her like a queen.

The doctor’s words had echoed through him the entire
drive back to Portland. The entire
quiet
drive. Bethany had sat there in the passenger seat, staring at the darkened world whizzing by them, one hand on her stomach. Even with the soft strains of jazz drifting through the Bronco, he would have sworn he heard every breath she drew. Every beat of her heart.

But she’d said nothing.

And neither had he.

He didn’t know what
to
say. Sitting there silently had been like wearing a straitjacket on his soul, but he didn’t know how to put the terror and the relief and the lingering fear into words. At least, not the soft, gentle words she needed.
Guilt would have twisted them. Intensity would
have distorted. So instead he gave her silence. And time.

She hadn’t fought him when he told her he was taking her to his house, like she had the night of the murder, when he’d walked back into her life. Less than two weeks had passed since then, but their entire lives had changed. In taking her away from
Portland, they’d entered a whole new
world,
a world where the horror of Lance’s murder didn’t
hang like a noose around Bethany’s neck. A world where
they could come to terms with the child they would share.

Bethany had always loved the mountains, and there amidst the old-growth pine forest, she’d come to life be
fore his
eyes. The thaw
had awed him, seduced. To see her smiling again. To hear her laugh. To feel her touch.

It had been a long, long time.

For a few precarious days, he’d thought they were moving forward. Now he wondered if the momentum had carried them back instead.

“You can sleep in here,”
he’d told her upon their arrival at his secluded home just outside
Portland.

The question flashed in her eyes. “And you?”

He wouldn’t sleep at all. But she didn’t need to know that. “I think we both need some time,” he said instead.

Silently, she’d nodded, then walked into his room and shut the door.

Now, moonlight streamed through a wall of windows, spilling gently on the woman in his bed. She looked so damn right there. So … peaceful. He’d seen her like this hundreds of times before, in his dreams. Soft. Beautiful. Precious.

But in those dreams, she hadn’t just almost suffered a miscarriage.

She shifted restlessly, her hair fanned across the pillow. He wanted to cross the room and touch her so damn bad, to put his mouth to her lips, his hand to her stomach.

But he didn’t move, didn’t trust himself to be around her without crushing her in his arms and never letting go. He could find none of the tenderness she deserved. Everything inside him felt jagged and broken, shattered. If he lived a hundred years, he knew he’d never forget the sight of her doubling over in pain, crying out.

What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell had he been thinking? Taking her into that remote area, out into the dense wooded area, being careless enough to fall off a cliff. Taking her right there on the edge, no holds barred, driving deep into her. While she carried a child. His child.

I let passion blind me. I didn’t think straight. I didn’t put the child first. I won’t let that happen again. I can’t.

Nine years ago, his recklessness had almost destroyed
her, and now, despite his efforts to be the man she de
served, history wanted to repeat itself.

He wouldn’t let
it. Standing there in the darkness, he
vowed to find a way to make everything okay. He wouldn’t hurt her again. No matter what it cost him, he’d cut out his own heart before hurting her again, because that’s what hurting her did to him.

And he wasn’t going to let it happen. She deserved happiness and peace. She deserved to hold and love and nurture the child she’d always wanted.

“The f-fire poker. It was in my hands.”

A violent curse tore silently through Dylan. In the morning, he would call Zito, find out the status of the investigation. Because God help him, somehow, some way, he’d find a way to give Bethany the future he’d once told her didn’t exist.

Even if he ended up behind bars in the process.

* * *

He was gone when she awoke. Beth searched the spacious wood and glass house, but found no trace of the man who’d driven silently through the night. A disturbing emptiness accompanied her from room to room, every heartbeat deepening the chill.

Something was wrong.

She stepped onto the wide back porch and glanced toward the horizon, where Mount Hood rose against an azure sky. Normally, the song of the birds and the gentle warmth of the morning sun brought a smile to her face, but she couldn’t find one now.

Never in a million years would she have dreamed fire and brimstone Dylan St. Croix would build a house so far from the hustle and bustle he thrived upon. Portland lay not too far to the west, but the city seemed a world away.

Why? Beth wondered. Why?

Dylan had been by her side nonstop since the moment he’d walked back into her life, almost two weeks before. He’d barely left her alone, not even when she wanted him
to. But now, now that she craved the feel of his arms around her, he was nowhere to be found.

The ache in her chest deepened,
sharpened, prompting
her to draw a hand to her stomach. Her baby.
Their
baby. There’d been no
more bleeding, no more cramping. She’d slept soundly, except the few times she’d awoken, hoping to feel the warmth of Dylan’s body close to hers, but finding only cold sheets.

Now she found only cold certainty. She was back
in
Portland, back in the nightmare Dylan had taken her away
from. There could be no more pretending, no more dreaming.

It was time to get on with the business of living.

* * *

“I have to admit I was surprised when your message said to call you at Dylan’s
house.”

Beth squeezed a lime slice into a glass of ice water. “It’s complicated.”

Janine frowned. “With that man, it always is. What in the world was he thinking taking you away in the middle of a
murder investigation? Doesn’t he know how that
looks?”

The uncertainty Beth had been fighting since waking
alone scraped a little deeper. Janine seemed worried, upset. And when she’d finally called her back, she’d practically
demanded Beth meet her as soon as possible.

“He told Detective Zito
where we were.”

“Well, he didn’t tell anyone else. If this
case ends up going to trial, that little disappearing act can be used against you.”

Beth had never seen Janine so agitated. But, she added
silently, most of their encounters had been over martinis
at cocktail parties, not ice water to discuss murder.

“What’s wrong? You said you’ve been trying
to reach
me?”

“Kent asked me to go through Lance’s files.”

Beth couldn’t say why, but her heart started to pound, hard. “And?”

Janine hesitated. Her long blond hair was pulled severely off her face into some kind of twist, making it impossible not to
see the fervor
in
the blue
of her eyes. “How well do you know Dylan?” she asked.