Lone Star Lonely (10 page)

Kirsten closed her eyes, sighed deeply.

“You can’t blame him for telling us. Honey,
this could all be involved in what happened to Joseph. The truth is
going to have to come out sooner or later.”

“All the truth is going to do, Penny, is
provide the police with yet another motive to add to the ever
growing list of reasons why I might have murdered my husband.”

Penny frowned at her. “Kirsten, none of us
are going to pass this on to the police.”

“Penny, your brother-in-law is the
police.”

“And you’re family,” she insisted.

“No. I was never family.”

Penny’s eyes got misty. She closed a hand
around one of Kirsten’s. “You are to me.”

Closing her eyes, Kirsten whispered, “Thanks
for that.”

“So, did you succeed? Did you ever get
anything on Joseph?”

“No. If I had, I’d have been out of here by
now. The man was as slippery as a snail. It was a stupid idea.” She
opened her eyes and stared at some invisible spot in midair. God,
Adam was going to want to know what Joseph had used against her.
She was going to have to tell him. She couldn’t even imagine
forcing the words through her lips. Telling the secret she’d given
up her life—her very soul—to keep.

“Kirsten, if he would blackmail you, don’t
you think he might have used the same tactics with other people?”
Penny was up, pacing now. The caring sister routine falling beneath
the onslaught of Penny Lane Brand, private eye. She’d been a Nancy
Drew wanna-be from the time she read her first mystery. And now
that she was taking P.I. classes at the community college, she was
damned dangerous. God help them all. “If we could find out for
sure, that would give someone else a motive for murder and maybe
help clear you.”

Kirsten hit the Pause button on her inner
turmoil and shot her friend a look. “Did you get your P.I. license
yet, Penny?”

With a sheepish smile, Penny shook her head.
“I take the finals next week. But I can’t go into business until
after the baby comes. Wouldn’t be safe.”

“Won’t be any safer then. And it isn’t
exactly safe to be hanging around here, either.”

“Then why are you?”

Kirsten swallowed. “I’m not dragging all this
trouble with me to the Texas Brand, Penny. And I’m not bringing it
to that nice house you and Ben built next door to the new dojo,
either.”

Penny tilted her head. “You know, when we
rebuilt the dojo, we put an apartment above it. You could—’’

“Right. And if the killer pops in during
Ben’s pre-school tai chi class, the four-year-olds will just
drop-kick him.”

Penny sighed. “There’s just no talking to
you, is there?”

Kirsten shook her head.

“Will you tell me what it was that Joseph had
on you, Kirsten?”

Meeting her best friend’s eyes, she said,
“I’m sorry, Penny. But I can’t.”

“Okay,” Penny said. She squeezed Kirsten’s
hand as Kirsten got to her feet. “Just remember, once it’s told,
it’s not a secret anymore. And once it’s not a secret, it loses its
power.”

A surge of heat and moisture welled up in
Kirsten’s eyes, and her throat went tight, just at the thought of
telling Penny, or Ben…or Adam. God, he was the one who had suffered
the most, wasn’t he? Adam. He would never forgive her if he
knew…and she realized now—as she had perhaps realized on some level
all along—that he was going to have to know, sooner or later.

God, please, later.

She stepped into the kitchen with Penny at
her side and she saw him. He sat in a chair staring back at her,
and it was in his eyes. Ben had told him what he knew. Thank
goodness Ben didn’t know all of it. There was an apology in Ben’s
eyes when they met hers. In Adam’s there was only a question.

One she couldn’t answer.

Because what could she say?

I’m really sorry, Adam. But it turns out I’m
the one who killed your parents twenty years ago. I’m the one who
orphaned six kids. I’m the reason your oldest brother Garrett had
to give up his scholarship to college and take over running a ranch
and raising a family at seventeen, and the reason your baby sister
grew up without her mother’s love. And I’m the reason you can’t
love, Adam. Because you’re so afraid of being abandoned again; of
being hurt again the way you were when your big brother had to tell
you that your mother and father wouldn’t be coming home anymore. It
was me. I killed your parents, Adam. And I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve wished it had been me instead of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was blackmailing
you?”

Adam stood beside the front door, staring out
the window at Ben’s pickup as it moved down the endless driveway to
pass through the gates to the road beyond. He didn’t look at
Kirsten. He didn’t want to just now. He was too afraid of the
powerful emotions swirling around inside him. Too afraid of losing
control.

It had been bad enough trying to make sense
of what she’d revealed last night, the sickening pictures she’d
painted with her words…pictures of Cowan in her bed, in her body,
when she didn’t want him there. But now this. His brother’s
revelation that made it sound as if maybe she’d been forced into
this marriage against her will. As if she’d had no choice.

“Why didn’t you just freaking tell me?” he
asked her again. They seemed to be the only words that came to
him.

Kirsten lowered her head. “I couldn’t. I
still can’t.”

“The hell you can’t.” He did turn now. But
she looked into his eyes for only the briefest instant. Pain
flickered and died in hers, and then she just walked away. Adam
followed her back through the foyer and into the opulent living
room beyond, with its glittering crystal chandelier and its
velvet-trimmed wall coverings and matching draperies and shiny
marble floor tiles. It looked like a funeral parlor.

“I think I have a right to know,” he
said.

She stopped walking, turned to face him. “It
doesn’t matter anymore, Adam. It’s ancient history.”

“How can you stand there and say it doesn’t
matter? For crying out loud, woman, you’d be my wife right now if
that bastard….” He didn’t finish, just shook his head and searched
her face. “What the hell could he have had on you that was so bad
it would make you miss your own wedding day—would make you leave
the man you claimed to love standing alone in a country church with
half the town looking on? Would make you send your own father away
just to keep him from learning the truth?”

She stood still, shook her head. “Adam,
don’t—”

He gripped her arms. “Not to mention making
you marry a man you didn’t love.”

She lowered her head, closed her eyes as if
shutting him out. “I had to do what I thought best at the time.
It’s that simple. It was my life, Adam. My decision.”

“It was my life that son of a bitch messed
with. And I want to know why.” She looked up at him again and let
him see inside her, just for a moment. He stared down into her eyes
and saw more secrets there than he’d ever seen. And more than that,
he saw her fear—fear that those secrets would be found out.

The doorbell broke the tension like a hammer
on a sheet of glass. She pulled away, turned toward it.

“Don’t,” he told her.

She stopped, her back to him, her head
hanging down. “You’re right, Adam. You have a right to know. And
I’ll tell you…everything. But right now I can’t. Because you’d have
to tell your brother, and he’d be honor bound to tell everyone
else.”

“Everyone else?”

“The Texas Rangers, the D.A., anyone else
who’s looking for one whopper of a motive for me to have murdered
my husband. They’d have it, Adam. They’d have it in spades if they
knew the truth. And I’d be convicted so fast there would barely be
time to mount a defense.”

He lowered his head. “So it comes down to
trust. And you don’t have any in me.”

Her rigid stance wavered just a little.
“You’re the only person I do trust, Adam.”

He closed his eyes and moved forward almost
against his own will. God, what she’d been through. It was killing
him to know what she’d been through. His hands slid over her
shoulders, and he pulled her back until her body rested against
his. “I’m sorry, Kirsty.”

“For what?”

The doorbell chimed again. Adam ignored it.
It crossed his mind that she might not even remember the things
she’d blurted out last night, while she’d raged drunkenly against
her dead husband. But he knew, and he couldn’t forget. If it was
true, if she’d been somehow forced into this marriage, then what
Joseph Cowan had done to her had been rape. There was no other word
for it, no softening of it. It had been rape.

But maybe it would be easier on her if she
didn’t remember her nighttime confessions.

“There’s no reason for you to apologize to
me, Adam. Nothing for you to be sorry for.”

He shook his head. “There’s a lot,” he said
slowly. “I’m sorry for not being there for you when you needed
help. For leaving town in a jealous rage instead of sticking around
to find out what was really happening. For the two years you spent
married to a bastard….” His throat closed off. He couldn’t go on.
The images were back, torturing him. Burning themselves a home in
his brain. Cowan. And Kirsten, her eyes too cold to shed tears.

“None of that was your fault.”

He didn’t have time to answer. His brother
Garrett’s voice came thundering through the walls, calling Adam’s
name while his beefy fist banged on the door. Hell, Garrett was
probably worried half to death by now. Adam leaned forward and
pressed a soft kiss to Kirsten’s hair. “I’m gonna make it up to
you,” he said.

“Don’t bother,” she told him. “I deserved
everything I’ve been through.” Then she strode away to get the
door, while Adam stared after her, brows bent, guts in turmoil. All
this time he’d hated her. All this time he’d blamed her. When she’d
never had a choice.

And he whispered, “You’re wrong, Kirsten.
Nobody deserves what you’ve been through.”

Kirsten pulled the door open. Garrett looked
from one of them to the other. His hair was rumpled, as if he’d
been pushing his hands through it. “What took you so long?”

“It’s a big house,” Adam said, but his tone
said more.
Leave it alone, big brother.

Garrett frowned hard, and his eyes went
curious, but he left it alone. It was pretty obvious that there
were more important things on his mind right now.

“You’d better sit down,” he told Kirsten,
then glanced at Adam. “You’d both better sit down.”

Adam swore. Kirsten rocked back just
slightly. So slightly Garrett might not have noticed, but Adam did.
He’d been watching her so closely, searching for some sign of what
secrets she harbored in the dark places of her heart, that he
noticed if she so much as breathed oddly. He took her arm and drew
her into the sitting room, a far cozier place than any other room
in the house. All wood. Knotty pine. With a fireplace and big, soft
furniture that hugged you when you sat down. Adam had discovered
the room on his search for Kirsten last night.

Garrett blinked when he stepped into the
room. “This is different.”

“That’s because I tore it apart and started
over. I was going to do the whole place, one room at a time, but
once Joseph saw what I’d done in here, he forbade me to touch
anything else.” Kirsten shrugged. “His loss.” Her hands fisted
together in front of her, and her knuckles were white. “So do we
discuss the weather next or get on with the bad news, Garrett?”

Garrett licked his lips and nodded at the
sofa, and Kirsten moved toward it but didn’t sit down. Adam stayed
where he was. “They know about the will, don’t they?” he asked,
unable to wait for his brother to spill the news.

Garrett’s brows went up. “They know what
about the will?”

Kirsten groaned. Adam sighed and kicked
himself. “I’m sorry,” he told her.

She shook her head. “He’d have found out
sooner or later, anyway.” And she glanced at Garrett. “Joseph left
me—”

“Don’t.” Garrett held up both hands.
“Kirsten, don’t say another word. I swore an oath when I pinned on
this badge, and I can’t break it. Anything you tell me, I’m gonna
be obliged to pass along. And if there’s something about that will
they don’t know yet, well, they’ll find out when they find out. The
longer it takes them, the better the chance of us finding the real
culprit. Understand?”

Blinking, Kirsten nodded.

“What did you come here to tell us, if not
about the will?” Adam asked.

“The gun.” Garrett worked the brim of his hat
between his thumbs and forefingers, turning it in a slow circle in
front of him. “The gun was registered to you, Kirsten. Bought a
week ago in El Paso by a woman matching your description, carrying
your ID.”

Kirsten sat down hard, as if some big gust of
wind had knocked her off her feet. “That’s not possible.”

“We already know your prints are on it. You
admitted you fired the weapon. You were found standing over the
body with it. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing
stolen–”

“I didn’t buy any gun. Garrett, I swear to
you, I didn’t buy any gun.”

“I believe you.”

Kirsten lifted her head slowly, met Garrett’s
eyes. “Do you?”

Garrett nodded, and Adam sighed in relief.
She didn’t need people doubting her right now.

“Joseph did this,” she whispered. “Somehow he
paid someone off to go in there and buy that gun, using some kind
of identification with my name on it. He must have.”

“But why would he want to?” Garrett asked.
“Kirsten, you can’t seriously think the man planned his own
murder.”

Kirsten lowered her head, closed herself down
the second the doubt crept into Garrett’s voice. “It doesn’t matter
what I think. I can’t prove it. They’re going to arrest me, aren’t
they, Garrett?” Very slowly she looked up.