Wild in the Field (8 page)

Only then did she realize that Pete was right behind her.

T
he instant Pete realized she was upset, he took off after her, but it wasn't that easy to catch up. She charged out of the dark theater so fast that he wasn't positive which direction she'd gone. The rest rooms were tucked off to the left. The main lobby led to exit doors off to the right. And straight ahead was a long hall leading to other movies being shown and then a back exit.

Pete jogged forward, then spun back. Midshow, the lobbies and halls were library-quiet, so when he heard the crack of a metal door at the end of the far hall, he immediately keeled around, guessing it had to be Cam. He caught a glimpse of red—the shoulder of her red long-sleeved T-shirt—just before the door closed again.

Guilt clogged his throat. Not a little guilt. A whole steam shovelful. Maybe he'd never been the ultrasensitive type of guy, but he wasn't usually this bad a jerk.
How could he have done this to her? What was he
thinking?

His palm slapped the back door open—which made his hand hurt like hell, but didn't assuage the guilt worth beans.

And there she was.

The theater's back door led to nothing but a parking lot and some scruffy woods. The sun was a red ball, hiding in those leafy trees, dropping fast now. The real world was only a block away—he could hear traffic sounds, even distant voices—but here, there was literally nothing and no one. A chill sneaked behind the evening sunshine, putting a brisk bite in the air.

And Camille had sunk down on the cement curb, arms wrapped around her knees, just kind of rocking herself with her eyes squeezed closed. She never opened her eyes or looked back, yet before he said a single word, she piped up, “Pete, I'm fine. Go back inside with the boys. I'll come back in. I just needed some air.”

Okay. So Camille had easily guessed that he'd follow her—but he should have easily guessed how the movie was likely to affect her. The kids had pushed for going, said it was a comedy. But he hadn't asked a single question—or he'd have known it was going to be about cops and city crime.

“Go back in,” she repeated, and motioned him with her hand, sounding aggravated now.

He came closer instead. In a split second—faster than a second—he realized he'd fallen so deep and so hard in love with her that he couldn't think straight.

Of course he'd realized he was increasingly miserable around her—but not that he was hooked this hard. It was the look of her. That stupid, butchered, chopped
off hair—but damn, it framed her face pixie-fashion, made her soft brown eyes look huge. Right now those eyes held an ocean of pain and her skin was whiter than chalk. Her hands were clenched in a clear effort to control their shaking, and her frail shoulders were hunched, making her look more fragile, more beaten—and it killed him. Frustrated him. Enraged him. Too see his Camille this over her head, this whipped by anything.

“You're having an anxiety attack.”

“Yup. If you've never seen one before, don't get your liver in an uproar. I do this a few times a week. Just to keep in practice. It'll pass in a minute.”

Her effort to treat it lightly made him sick. He hunkered down on the cement stoop next to her. “This one was brought on by the movie?”

“Who knows. Anything can set one off. I hear a strange sound—even if it'd be an innocuous sound to anybody else—and
shazam
, just like that, I'm suddenly sweating and acting like a complete idiot. It's really annoying. Would you just go back inside? Please. It's embarrassing enough to be such a wuss without having someone else see it. And it'll pass. In fact, it'll pass faster if you leave me alone. Other people can't help. It just takes me a few minutes of concentration to pull myself together.”

He wanted to pull her in his arms so bad he could taste it, but some internal instinct stopped him. He'd pulled her into his arms before. It hadn't brought them closer together; it seemed to make her even warier. Camille treated concern as if it were a poison she could choke on. Still, he wanted—needed—to understand more of what she was dealing with. “The movie. I didn't realize. I thought it was just a comedy—”

“I know. Don't waste guilt on me, Pete. You didn't do anything wrong. I knew better than to come into town.”

“Well, that sounds pretty unfair. Unless you were planning on staying home forever?”

“No, of course not. I need to make a living. Have to find work again. And I will. I just need a little more time to get past this.” Her head shot up. “Do me a favor and
don't
suggest going to a shrink.”

“I wasn't going to.” He might not be brilliant with women, but Pete knew when to shut up or risk being strangled.

“I don't need any damn shrink to tell me I'm acting like an idiot. Or why. I'm not stupid.”

“Did I say you were?” Oh, man. That belligerent chin. That fierce well of pain in her eyes. That soft skin. A mantra kept whispering through his mind with the same old refrain:
Let me love you. Let me help you. Let me protect you and make sure no one ever hurts you again.
But of course he couldn't make those promises—he didn't have the power. Or the right.

“I can handle my own life, Pete. Just because I'm having trouble doesn't mean I'm incapable of fixing it.”

Sheesh. Somehow she seemed to feel he was attacking her—which he wasn't, and he wanted to correct that impression, except that the show of belligerence seemed to be doing her good. Fresh color bloomed in her cheeks. Her hands had stopped shaking. And she was still talking.

“There's a reason I'm taking so long to get my life back together. It's about power.”

“Power,” he echoed, wanting to encourage her even if she wasn't making a lick of sense.

She nodded. “Both my parents raised me to believe that I was powerful. Seriously. I grew up believing that I had power over my life, over what I could become, over what I could do. Most people complain about feeling insecure all the time. Not me. I wasn't raised insecure, I was raised to believe I could conquer the world—if I just worked hard and kept my nose clean and stood up for the things that mattered.”

He hung his arms over his knees. “That sounds exactly like how I'm trying to raise my sons.”

“Well, don't. Because then when something happens, like when I was attacked, it's like a double blow. I'd never felt helpless before. I'd never felt…impotent. It was as if those three men took it all away. Not just Robert, not just life as I knew it, but me. They took away
me
.”

Again he wanted nothing more than to pull her in his arms, to love her. To shield her. The urge was so strong he almost couldn't suck it back…. But damnation, this wasn't about him, and what he wanted to do. It was about her. About Camille believing she'd lost herself. And about a woman who spit back sympathy if you dared try to give it to her.

“So you're just planning on hiding out on the farm rather than risk being any part of real life?” he asked.

“Pardon?” She turned to him with a flash of vulnerability in her eyes.

“That's what you're saying, isn't it? That even going to a movie is too much for you to handle.”

Her jaw almost dropped. “I can handle it—”

“Well, you're out here shaking. I'd hardly call that ‘handling it.'” He saw the shocked look in her eyes, the sting of hurt. And pushed harder. “If you weren't
feeling so sorry for yourself, you'd be going back in the movie, proving it was no big deal.”

More hurt. But those shoulders stiffened like soldiers. “It
isn't
any big deal. I'm going back in the movie right this minute. I told you. I just needed a few seconds to get some air.” She bolted to her feet. “And just because you caught me with my hands shaking for a second doesn't mean I'm some needy little wimp. It happens. I admit that. But it's happening tons less than it did. I'm perfectly fine.”

“So you say.”

“You're damn right, so I say.”

She stomped to the door, discovered—no surprise—that the back exit door was locked from the outside, and then stomped all the way around the theater, into the lobby, and back into the darkened movie to the exact same seats they'd had before. She didn't speak to him through the rest of the movie. Or during the drive home either.

The boys never sensed anything was wrong. The whole ride, they never quit talking, replaying every scene and chortling over the good parts the way they always did after a movie. As Pete drove, he realized he hadn't seen how the boys related to Camille before.

He'd sensed that his sons had somehow accepted her, which was pretty darn astounding, since they hadn't had a positive word to say about a woman since their mother took off. It was both fascinating and unnerving to see how different they were with Camille—partly, it seemed, because she made no attempt to mother them or correct them or “play adult” with them in any sense.

He noted their behavior with Cam. Noted
her
behavior with them. But mostly he noticed that the air
between the adults could have frozen ice cubes in a rain forest.

He'd hurt her. She hadn't expected him to say anything mean or critical. And implying she couldn't handle something always had been, likely always would be, like waving a red flag in front of a bull. At the time, he hadn't seen any other choice. He'd been trying to find a way to get to her. But Cam had put up so many fierce defenses that getting to her by any conventional means simply didn't work.

In her driveway, his headlights flashed on the snow fence she'd set up for Darby, who promptly began an exuberant symphony of snarling and barking the instant the truck pulled up. Camille pushed out of the seat and vaulted down with a good-night for the boys, but noticeably no comment for him.

He'd hurt her, all right. Only it felt as if it were his own heart that had been stabbed.

 

As soon as the truck lights disappeared, Camille hustled in the cottage, rooted high and low until she came across the dog leash, and then hustled outside again.

Killer was still howling and snarling himself into a frenzy. “Shut up, you witless dolt. There's no one here but me. C'mere.”

The dog, naturally, hated the leash. “I know. I haven't been making you use the leash anymore, but this is different. The fact is, I can't trust you. I'm willing to take you for a walk to run off that energy, but I can't risk your running off and attacking someone. Believe me, I understand your bad temper. I'm in exactly the same kind of mood. But right now, you only have two choices—a walk with the leash, or no walk.”

It was hard enough to clip on the leash when the dog
wasn't being rambunctious and ornery, but tonight it was dark besides. Finally she managed, but right as she was pushing to her feet, the dog licked her cheek.

“I don't love you, so don't be thinking I care,” Camille scolded, but Killer seemed as unimpressed with this threat as all her others. Once she unlatched the gate, he bounded beside her, ears perked high and alert, walking to her exact pace.

The long night walks had become a pattern. She'd been sleeping better ever since she'd begun working in the lavender—the backbreaking work guaranteed she'd fall asleep. But sometimes the ridiculous nightmares still plagued her, and then walking seemed to help. Stumbling in the dark wasn't ideal, but Killer was sure-footed, and the farm path around the acres of lavender had become a familiar route.

Since no one was around, she talked to the dog. It seemed a little saner than talking to herself. And it didn't seem to matter what she said or how mean she said it, Killer seemed to listen. In fact, the damn dog seemed to crave the sound of her voice—not that she did it for his sake.

Tonight, though, she set up a fast hiking pace and didn't talk at all. Killer, tuned to her channel, hiked and watched—with only a few breaks to tear off into the bushes and lift a leg.

The brisk walk helped Camille work up a fume. The nerve of that man! Implying she couldn't handle a movie if she wanted to! Implying she was a coward for not leaving the farm!

Pete hadn't been through what she had, for God's sake. And for the first time in all these weeks, she'd actually been trying to tell him. Not a lot. But she hadn't opened up at all since the whole thing happened,
and she thought she could trust Pete. Instead, he'd implied that she couldn't handle even something so little as going to a movie.

It chafed like a rug burn.

Not hurt. Camille had no intention of ever allowing her feelings so out of control that being hurt was even a possibility. But she could be…chafed. And aggravated. And insulted.

The whole damn world had been nice to her since the attack. Everyone had appreciated what a terrible and unbearable thing she'd been through.
Everyone.
And there she'd shared the tiniest bit with Pete, and he'd made out like she was a wimp. She was inclined to…why, she was inclined to…

She promptly stumbled on a rock and nearly tripped. Not because she was clumsy, but because she glanced up and saw Pete standing on her back porch. He stood directly under the porch light, as if knowing she'd tend to be afraid of anyone showing up after dark, yet she felt no fear. If she felt a shiver seep into her pulse, it was caused from something far different from fear. Although her first thought was just: Good, now she'd have the chance to punch his lights out.

Killer, of course, started immediately barking—and because Camille wasn't prepared, the dog yanked the leash from her hand and tore off toward Pete, sounding like a canine version of Sylvester Stallone on a Rambo rampage.

“Oh, shut up, Darby,” Pete said.

The dog promptly sat down and then lay down, tongue lolling. Camille shook her head, flabbergasted at the dog's docility, but Killer couldn't hold her attention for long. Her gaze glued on Pete and wouldn't let go. “What are you doing here?”