When You Are Mine (17 page)

“Get your damn hands off my wife, Bennett!”

Cam crossed the room in a few steps, manacling Kerris’s wrist and roughly jerking her behind him. Walsh heard her moan.

“You’re hurting her,” Walsh said, keeping his tone even.

He could still hear laughter down the hall from the few guests who remained. He wanted to spare Kerris the scene their raised voices would cause.

“Ease up, Cam. It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, that’s good to know because I
thought
I saw your tongue down my wife’s throat.”

Grit and anger littered Cam’s voice. He looked only at Walsh, not even glancing at Kerris. Cam’s fury encompassed the three of them, squeezing the air from Walsh’s lungs until he wasn’t even breathing.

“It was a kiss, Cam.” Walsh’s calm tone belied the quickened beat of his heart. “It meant nothing.”

“Nothing!” The word torpedoed from Cam’s mouth. “It’s been ‘nothing’ since the day you met her, hasn’t it, Bennett? You wanted my girl that first night and ever since, right? You think I didn’t see it? That
everyone
hasn’t seen you making a fool of yourself over her?”

There was nothing Walsh could say. It was true. That first night he had been bowled over. Enraptured. Practically oblivious to everyone at that scholars’ ceremony except the slender woman Cam still held in a painful grip.

“Nothing to say?” Cam sneered, eyes slitted by anger. “All your life, everything’s been handed to you on a silver platter, and I get this one thing. This one thing you want more than anything else and can’t have.”

“And you made sure you capitalized on that fact. Didn’t you?” Walsh unclenched his fists at his side, forcing his breathing to slow. “How’s it feel to have guilted your wife into marrying you? You knew how I felt, so you rushed to get her to the altar because you were afraid I’d do something about it.”

“Maybe I did,” Cam said. Walsh saw Kerris’s sharp glance at her husband. “She was mine, Bennett. The only thing I ever had of my own, and you thought you could have her like you have everything else.”

“That’s not true, Cam.” Walsh shook his head slowly. “I knew she was yours. I was attracted to her. That’s all.”

“Liar!” Cam dropped Kerris’s wrist to lunge toward the man who had been like a brother to him.

Kerris quickly slipped between them, taking the brunt of Cam’s weight, which knocked her back against Walsh and sandwiched her between them.

“Cam, Walsh still has a concussion.” She held him back with her hand on his chest. “Tonight was…wrong, but it was just a kiss. We were talking about the kidnapping, how close Walsh came to dying, and just got…emotional. Nothing more happened and nothing ever will.”

Nothing ever will.

The words reverberated through Walsh like a benediction. Though true, it rocked him to the core. Of course she would choose Cam. Her life was here with him. It was the only choice, but it snuffed out an unspoken, impossible hope that had hidden in his heart. That one day, somehow, she would be his. But no. She would do what was right. That was what he loved about her. That line of integrity that ran through her as surely as the river cut through the earth. A force, compelling and pure.

“So here’s where the guest of honor disappeared to.” Jo strolled through the door, a margarita in her hand, a smile on her face. She took in the tense triangle of Kerris, Cam, and Walsh. The smile froze on her face and then melted. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that your cousin can’t keep his hands to himself.” Cam pressed against Kerris’s hand, still on his chest, straining toward Walsh again.

“What have you done?” Jo spat at Kerris, her eyes snapping her fury.

“I’m…I’m sorry.” Kerris ran the one hand she had free through her hair. “We didn’t mean—”

“You didn’t mean what, Ker?” Cam looked at her like algae growing on the river. “You slipped and fell into Walsh’s arms?”

“No. Cam, just listen to me.”

“I’m done listening. I’ll deal with you later.”

“Don’t you hurt her.” Walsh’s jaw tightened until it ached.

“She’s
my
wife, Walsh.” Cam pulled Kerris from between them, moving her back behind him. “You don’t seem to get that. You’re one arrogant, entitled bastard, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I am.” Walsh stared at Kerris’s distraught face over Cam’s shoulder.

“You should go, Walsh.” Her eyes begged him not to make this any worse.

“I know.” But Walsh couldn’t look away even now, clearly seeing the pain and the regret in her eyes. Feeling all of those things, too. “I’m sorry, Kerris. This was my fault.”

“Yeah, it was.” Anger distorted Cam’s handsome face. Disappointment dulled his eyes.

“Let’s go.” Jo tugged on Walsh’s wrist.

“You heard her,” Cam said. “Go. And don’t come back. We’re done, Bennett. Don’t come sniffing around my wife. I don’t ever wanna see you again.”

The pain of a lost brother, of the enmity that tangled like barbed wire between him and the best friend he’d ever had, sliced over the still-throbbing wound of his futile, thwarted love for Kerris. His heart was being ripped from his chest. He rushed over to the door, now desperate to get away.

“I’m going.” He wouldn’t allow himself even one more glance at Kerris. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…If you ever need anything—”

“We won’t.” Cam’s eyes were like diamond chips against his tanned skin. “Clear the hell outta here, Bennett.”

Walsh and Jo walked through the door leading outside to the backyard instead of back into the party. Walsh refused to respond to Jo’s questions and accusations on the way home. He withdrew, holding the taste of Kerris on his lips as long as he could, certain he’d never be that close again.

Y
ou fucking whore,” Cam snarled, standing over Kerris, who sat completely still on the edge of their bed.

Kerris winced, biting her lip to keep from crying. She knew Cam could be vicious when angered, but she also knew he would not physically harm her. He leaned in, bringing them practically nose to nose. She braced herself.

“Is this how you show me you’re my only, Ker?” Cam’s blue-gray eyes sparked with rage.

“Cam, if you’d just listen—”

“You bitch! My best friend. Have you fucked him?”

“Cam, no.” Shame weighed heavily, drooping her head until her chin rested on her chest. “It was just a kiss. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“No, it shouldn’t have.” Cam tossed the words back at her head like boulders. He paced back and forth.

“It won’t happen again,” she rushed to say. “We were both emotional talking about Haiti—”

“And why would he talk to you when he’s refused to talk to anybody else, even his own mother?” Cam came to a halt to stand in front of her, a tightly held column of wrath.

For the same reason she had talked to him about TJ after years of painful silence. For whatever reason, Walsh had held the key to unlock those painful memories, to heal her wounded soul. And she knew she’d held the key to his. Walsh had been a salve to her hurt, and she had been a salve to his. She couldn’t say that to her husband.

She sat in numb silence, waiting for him to spew more venom. She saw his great hurt, the soul-deep laceration she had inflicted tonight. She saw the hard-won, rarely offered trust that Cam had been so stingy with all his life, laying in tatters around them. And she felt low and dirty and unworthy. She deserved his rage.

“You betrayed me.” Cam resumed his pacing in the wake of her guilty silence. “With my best friend. He was like a brother to me, and you’ve killed that.”

“I’m sorry.” She winced when he stopped right in front of her, grabbing the back of her neck, his fingers digging cruelly through her hair to find the fragile bones beneath.

“You’re sorry?” Seething anger bubbled up in the eyes running over her face. “You’re sorry,” he repeated, loosening his grip on her neck to lean in and nuzzle her, deceptively gentle. “Sorry that you cost me my best friend?” he whispered in her ear, sucking on the tender lobe before continuing.

“Are you sorry you deceived me?” He trailed furious kisses down the downy curve of her neck.

“I didn’t deceive you.” Kerris shuddered as Cam wove a cocoon of raging intimacy around them. “I made a mistake. It was thoughtless. I wish I could take it back, but it won’t happen again.”

“You’re damned right it won’t happen again.” Cam pulled the edge of her tunic back and tongued her collarbone. “You’re mine, Kerris.”

“Yes, I am.” Kerris was quick to agree. Eager to remind him of it. “Cam, please don’t forget that. I am
your
wife. I chose you. I love you. We still have our family to build and our future together.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt we’ll have a future together, angel.” He laughed against the exposed skin of her neck. “I’ll never let you go, Kerris. You know that, right?”

“I don’t want to go.” She pulled back to look into the shadowed beauty of his face, still mottled with temper. “I want to stay with you.”

“Prove it.”

“How…what—”

“Take off your clothes.” His staccato words cut into the quiet of their bedroom, pelting her nerves.

“Cam, don’t do this.” She clutched the collar he had already pulled away. “Please don’t do this in anger.”

“I’m not angry anymore, Kerris.” His swiped his expression free of the fury she knew still boiled under his skin. “I’ve just discovered that seeing another man kissing my wife turns me on.”

Kerris gulped, willing to do anything to heal the hurt she saw behind his rage, but afraid he could do irreparable damage to their marriage, more even than what she had done. Sex had never been easy for her. Her twisted history with TJ had made it hard and complicated and scary, but she had overcome the pain of it, had given herself freely to her husband and could find some pleasure in the act.

Cam had always been gentle and considerate. She had told him the story of TJ on their wedding night. He had seen them as two broken spirits coming together to heal each other, finding each other and helping each other. He’d always been tender with her, but there was no tenderness in him now. He folded his arms across the lean muscles of his chest, waiting for her to strip. Wanting to reestablish himself as her husband in the most fundamental way a man could.

Kerris pursed her lips, blinking back tears of shame and hurt, knowing she would not refuse. She tugged at the hem of her tunic, pulling it over her head, exposing her simple black bra. She pulled off the leggings, feeling the greedy slide of his eyes over her nearly naked body. She reached up to the front clasp of the bra, ready to take the next step in this sexual battle of wills where Cam held every advantage. His fingers covered hers, a viperous grin on his too-handsome face.

“I’ll take it from here.”

He opened the clasp and ruthlessly fondled her nipples. He pushed her back against the coolness of their freshly washed sheets. Kerris closed her eyes, tears streaking her face, making a slow slide into the corners of her mouth and washing away the bittersweet traces of Walsh’s kiss.

“I can’t let you run this time, Walsh,” Jo said while Walsh tossed clothes into his suitcase with short, tight motions.

“Yeah, try and stop me.” He moved forward, ignoring the yawning hole in his chest, refusing to allow the aching emptiness to slow him down. “I gotta get out of Rivermont.”

“Walsh, what were you thinking?” Jo, not for the first time since they’d left the cottage, looked at him like he was the class dunce.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

“Of course you were, only not with your head but with your dick.” Anger smelted Jo’s gray eyes to hot silver. She leaned forward to poke him in the chest when he strode by.

“Is that what you think?” He stopped, forcing himself to face her.

“That you’ve lusted after Kerris since day one? I know you have, and now Cam knows it, too.”

“Cam has known how I feel about Kerris for a long time.” Walsh shook his head, hindsight bringing everything into clear focus. “That’s why he rushed her to get married. The night they announced their engagement I was about to tell him how I felt. I should have. I knew this would happen.”

“Knew what? That you’d cheat with Kerris? Damn, Walsh, has it gone any further than a kiss?”

“No, it hasn’t.” He faced his dresser, stretching his arms across its width and gripping the edges. “Kerris would never let it go further than that. She wouldn’t have even let it go that far tonight if the circumstances hadn’t been so extreme. We were talking, and it just got too intimate. Too close.”

“Why would you talk to her about what happened in Haiti when you wouldn’t even talk to me or Aunt Kris?” The hardened shell around Jo’s voice didn’t hide her hurt and confusion.

“I wish I could explain to you what I feel for that woman.” He dropped his head to the dresser, wanting to bang his head over and over in punishment for his careless stupidity tonight. “She feels like my other half, Jo.”

“You don’t believe in that shit.”

“I didn’t.” Walsh raised his head and moved back toward his closet to drag out a duffel bag. “But I do now.”

“What’s so special about her?”

“She is…” Walsh lost words, coming to a halt in the middle of the room, a shirt dangling from his fingers. “She’s pure. There’s no subterfuge, no faking. And she’s kind, to a fault. She’s sensitive to other people’s feelings. And to be all of that, to be such a good person, after how her life began, is a miracle.”

“Oh, my God, you really do love her.” Astonishment swept away the anger on Jo’s face.

“Like you didn’t know that the night before their wedding,” Walsh said through the cage of his gritted teeth. “You ignored it and wanted to make sure we didn’t hurt Cam’s feelings. Like you always do.”

“You broke Cam’s heart tonight.”

“I know that.” Walsh gave free rein to the guilt he’d been suppressing ever since Cam turned on that bright light. “His face…what do you think he’s doing to her?”

“I think he’s probably screwing her brains out.”

“What?” Walsh turned to face her, a frown snatching his brows together.

“Oh, yeah.” Jo nodded her certainty. “If I know Cam, and I probably know him even better than you do, he’s gonna want to make sure she remembers who her husband is. He’s a very sexual man. You know that.”

“Stop it.”

The image of Cam in bed with Kerris after what she and Walsh had shared for those few moments tonight was a screw slowly being twisted into the surface of his mind by an unrelenting screwdriver.

“I can’t…I need…I need you to check on her tomorrow, Jo. Make sure he hasn’t hurt her.”

“Cam would never hurt a woman. And Kerris is probably willing to do whatever it takes to get back in his good graces.”

“Fuck!”

Walsh squeezed the bridge of his nose, wanting more than anything to rush back to the cottage and drag her out of there. He started back toward his closet with new urgency.

“I gotta get out of Rivermont before I do something even worse. You thought tonight was stupid. Just trap me here a few days with those images in my head, and you’ll see stupid.”

“Walsh, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Jo drew a deep breath, placing a restraining hand on his arm; he was still flinging clothes into his suitcase. “I can’t let you run this time.”

“I have to.” Walsh shook Jo’s hand off.

“You need to talk to your mother.” Her tone was wall-flat and insistent.

Walsh glanced over his shoulder to stare at his cousin.

“Of course I’ll talk to Mom before I leave.”

“No, go talk to her right now.” Jo swallowed hard, and the tears didn’t slide down her face, but they stood in her eyes. “She has something to tell you.”

“What do you mean—” Walsh cut the sentence short at the pained emotion on his cousin’s pretty face. “What’s wrong with Mom?”

“She’s in her bedroom.” Walsh had never heard Jo’s voice so completely devoid of shine. Dull. Matte. Reflecting nothing, not even the turmoil he knew was teeming inside. “Go ask her for yourself.”

Walsh prowled down the hall toward his mother’s suite of rooms, rapping on the door.

She smiled when she saw Walsh at the door, patting the bed beside her, motioning for him to come sit. She placed the book she was reading pages down.

“Walsh, come in. How was the party?”

Walsh didn’t sit, refusing to go through the polite motions.

“Jo says you have something to tell me.”

Her smile dissolved. She folded her lips into a taut line, dropping her eyes to the book she had just discarded, running her finger down its spine.

“Did she now?” She blinked several times, not once lifting her eyes to meet Walsh’s.

“Mom, stop stalling. What is it?”

She swallowed, closing her eyes briefly before opening them to stare unflinchingly at Walsh.

“I have cancer, and it’s bad.”

The cartilage around Walsh’s knees softened. His heart hiccupped, snatching his breath. All the air left the room. He felt himself suffocating under the force of another unavoidable blow. But nothing could compare to this. There was nothing he could have done to brace himself for the searing pain even the possibility of losing his fearless mother brought.

He dropped to the bed where she waited, her face stoic. Walsh couldn’t formulate words to ask the questions he needed answered. A game of Scrabble had been tossed in the air, and every letter of every word was scattered on the floor. No words. Only an earth-shifting silence that left him disoriented and lost.

“It’s stomach cancer.” She plucked at the downy comforter covering her knees, fingers restless, eyes steady as she told him all she’d been hiding.

“I’ve been feeling tired for a while, but I’m always busy. So I didn’t think too much of it. I’d lost my appetite, but I’ve never been a big eater. Then I started losing weight. And a few weeks ago, I started bleeding.”

“How do we fight it?”

“It’s stage four. We’re getting a late start.”

“What’s the next step?”

“Well, they want to get in there and see how bad it is. How much it’s spread.”

“How soon can we do that?”

“I wanted to tell you first, but you’d just gotten home.”

“When did you find out?” Now he couldn’t stop asking questions, firing them at her in an unrelenting succession.

“I knew for sure the day you flew out to Haiti.”

“You let me go to Haiti knowing this? We’ve lost weeks.”

Walsh blinked back the burn of tears even the word “Haiti” brought to his eyes. Shitty emotion that he could barely swallow back, fight back, hold back. But he would for now.

“Walsh, I couldn’t very well tell you on the phone while you waited for your flight. And then, the kidnapping. It’s just been…a lot.”

“Jo knew this.” Anger threaded through the needle of his words. “Jo has known for weeks and she kept it from me?”

Walsh walked over to the door and toward the hall. “Jo, get in here.”

Jo was already in the hall, seated on the floor against the wall with her knees up. She met the desperation in Walsh’s eyes with tears pooling in hers. Uncle James’s wife had died when Jo was so small that Kristeene had been as much her mother as Walsh’s. He knew she felt her insides caving under the weight of this fight because he felt it, too. But what he needed now was the fierce strength she had seen in his mother, the strength she had planted in Jo.

“Get up. Come in here.”

“Walsh, I can’t.” Her voice was a shadow of its usual self. “What if…”

“What if what, Jo?” He squatted in front of his cousin, grasping her hands in his. “What if she dies? Right now, based on what I’m hearing, the odds aren’t really in our favor. But we’ll do everything we can and hope for the best. You ready?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Come on.”

“What are you going to do?” She gripped the hand he used to pull her to her feet.