Midnight Sins (62 page)

Whatever emotion burned in his gaze for her.

She could lose Rafe, and she suddenly realized

that despite the distance she had placed between

them, she didn’t want to lose him. She couldn’t bear to

lose him.

For the past five years she had lived for the rare

times they had come together. She had waited for

him, watched for him, and she longed for him with a

strength that had kept her from settling for any other

lover.And in that second, gazing in his eyes, she

realized that was what she would do if she wasn’t very

careful. She was going to damage whatever it was

between them that had kept them coming to each

other over the years. That bond of hunger, and

something, something she simply couldn’t define, that

kept the hunger growing ever stronger.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I should have told

you, Rafe. I should have told you so many things.”

She should have never kept the secrets she had

kept. Not just about the phone calls but about most

especially about the child she had lost. That part of

Rafe, that part of the soul-deep need she had for him

that she had so longed to give birth to, that had been

taken from her.

She should have told him. And now, it just may

have come too late.

CHAPTER 21

The past was like a ghost, a haunting spectre he

couldn’t escape no matter his attempts. No matter the

attempts his cousins made. From their births, they

had faced the hatred and controversy of their wellloved

mothers marrying the town’s least-loved

citizens.

The Callahan brothers had been more than the

town had known and yet less than it would have taken

for Corbin County citizens to ever make the move to

ignore the call to ostracize anything Callahan.

Before Rafe’s, Logan’s, and Crowe’s fathers had

married the three heiresses, they hadn’t been

ostracized. They had been liked, not always trusted

but always able to charm their way into the hearts and

minds of those they knew. Once their relationships

with the Corbin, Rafferty, and Ramsey daughters were

known, all that had changed.

James Corbin and Saul Rafferty had been

certain that public condemnation would destroy those

relationships. They hadn’t realized how stubborn and

how deeply their daughters had loved the men they

had chosen.

As Rafe stared down at Cami, he was reminded,

not for the first time, of the legacy his, Logan’s, and

Crowe’s parents had left them. A legacy that made

the lives of the women they might love potentially

dangerous. A legacy that those women might not be

able to adapt to as easily as they had, because they

had lived it every day of their lives. Perhaps, in a way,

they had grown used to it.

Cami wasn’t a woman known to apologize.

Jaymi had once told her that even when Cami had

been no more than a teenager, she never apologized.

When Jaymi asked her why, Cami had stared back at

her with what she described as grim determination

and said because she made certain she meant

everything she said and everything she did.

She had just been a child then, her life a series of

disappointments and chastisements. What Jaymi had

said was a teenager’s habit of rebelling, Eddy had

described as a result of a young girl constantly being

berated instead.

“We’ll talk later,” Rafe promised as he fought to

push back the rage that still burned from their earlier

confrontation.

It wasn’t a rage directed at her, at least not

entirely.

It was directed at life, at the circumstances, at the

loss of a life that hadn’t had the chance to even live.

She turned away quickly, the sharp inhalation of

breath drawing his attention. Hurting her was the last

thing he wanted to do. The last thing he intended to

do. But neither would he lie to her.

He wasn’t about to tell her to not worry about it,

and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her it was

okay. Because it wasn’t. What he did intend to do

was teach her to never fucking hide anything else

from him.

She hadn’t exactly lied to him, but the lie of

omission could be just as destructive. And if there

was a chance in hell of a future with her, then she

would have to learn the value of never keeping

secrets from him.

Catching her wrist as she moved to turn away

from him, Rafe threaded his fingers with hers,

gripping her hand and holding her close as the sheriff

discussed the explosion with Crowe.

Rafe could see Archer was having problems with

the information Cami had given him and the fact that

the garage had obviously been deliberately blown to

fucking hell.

“Sheriff, we can’t find any bodies,” the fire

marshal, Drew Jacoby, stated in a rasping growl.

Jacoby, a transplant from Denver whom the city had

hired when they moved from the volunteer fire

department to a paid force, was a tall, rough-talking

Texan who rarely put up with any crap at all.

Especially the gossiping kind.

Archer turned from the Callahans as he whipped

his hat from his head and pushed his fingers through

the short strands of his thick, dark hair.

“Maybe they weren’t there,” he suggested, hope

filling his voice.

Jacoby gave a heavy shrug of his shoulders as

he turned back to the charred remains of the garage,

his expression brooding.

“We can hope—”

“Hey, Sheriff, it’s Townsend!” Deputy Eisner

announced, his voice high, excited, as a black sedan

raced into the parking lot to come to a bone-jarring

stop.

Jeannie was out of the car first, with Jack

stepping out more slowly, his expression bemused as

he stared at the garage as though he was certain he

had to be seeing things.

Cami ran for the couple, aware of Rafe’s hand

still gripping hers as he all but pulled her along, his

long, powerful legs outdistancing hers.

“Jeannie.” Cami pulled away from Rafe, her arms

going around the other woman as Jeannie suddenly

began sobbing.

“Oh my God,” she cried, holding on to Cami

desperately. “What happened? Cami, what

happened?”

“We were so scared you and Jack were in there.”

Cami pulled back to glance back at the garage, then

to Jeannie and Jack once again. “Thank God you’re

all right.”

“But what happened?” Confusion and fear filled

her gaze.

“Bastard!” Jack suddenly cursed. “That fucking

bastard. He called last night.” Jack turned to Cami,

his eyes blazing with fury. “He told me I should’ve kept

my nose out of Callahan business and I’d learn the

hard way I should have gone to Denver with the rest of

the family.”

Cami drew back from Jeannie slowly.

She could feel the guilt moving in, slowly, surely.

This was her fault. Jack had been trying to help her. If

he hadn’t been the one she had questioned after

leaving Rafe’s, if he hadn’t become curious because

of her questions, then this would have never

happened.

“Cami, this wasn’t your fault.” Jeannie suddenly

caught her arm as Rafe, distracted by Jack’s

announcement, turned away from her. “You didn’t

cause any of this, I swear. Jack has been bothered by

too many things lately where his friends are

concerned. And pretending the Callahans weren’t his

friends when they returned wasn’t happening.”

Cami shook her head. She didn’t believe Jack

would have begun questioning his father over the

Callahans, though, or learned about the brake lines to

Jaymi’s car with the wreck twelve years ago if it hadn’t

been for her.

Those particular questions were the ones that

had made Jack a target. Just as they had made her a

target.

“Let me find the son of a bitch and I’ll kill him,”

Jack snarled as Cami turned to see him staring at the

bulding with naked pain.

“Jack, think of Jeannie,” Archer warned him, his

voice low. “If you’re out chasing the bad guys, who’s

going to protect her? Leave this to me. I promise you,

I’m not my father. I’ll find out who’s behind it.”

“Dammit, Archer, you think I’m just going to sit

around and wait for that son of a bitch to just find me

and Jeannie and announce his presence again?” A

tight, savage smile curled his lips. “Hell no, I won’t.

You better hope you find him before I do. Because

when I get my hands on him there won’t be anything to

prosecute.”

He was enraged, but at least he was alive, Cami

thought as she felt Rafe’s arm curl around her back,

his fingers gripping her hip to pull her closer to him.

He was making a statement. As the crowd grew

around the destroyed garage he was making it a

point to show everyone who bothered to look exactly

whom she was with there.

And there was plenty of looking. She could feel

the gazes, some antagonistic, others curious, and still

others calculating.

She met those gazes defiantly. She’d spent too

many years running from what she wanted, running

from the only man who did anything to fire her blood or

to make her feel more than friendship.

These people’s opinions should have never

mattered for even a second, but she had pretended

as though they had, to save her own heart. To keep

her emotions shielded and her secrets closely

guarded.

There were no secrets any longer. Rafe knew the

past, and he would either accept it or walk away. She

wouldn’t demand anything from him either way.

“You’re staring at Eisner’s back as though you’re

going to send a dagger through it,” Rafe murmured

beside her as she realized she was indeed staring at

Eisner, wishing she could kick him, scream at him,

hurt him as he had tried to hurt the Callahans so many

times for the very people he was now talking to.

James Corbin and his son, William.

But standing with them and glaring at Eisner as

well was William’s young daughter, Kimberly Ann

Corbin.

Ann Corbin at nineteen favored her father’s side

of the family. Long auburn hair fell nearly to her waist

in a riot of curls while sea-green eyes stared at

Eisner, her expression creased in anger.

Her father, Will, kept trying to shoo her back. The

more he tried to shoo her, the closer she got until she

was standing at his elbow.

Both Corbin men would glare at her; they would

cut Eisner off at some points. William rubbed at the