His Cami should never cry. And especially not because of him.
The knowledge of those years was like a dagger shoving inside his gut. Why would she care? For God’s sake, nothing was going to change the past, nothing would ever affect the barons until he, Logan, and Crowe established the vengeance they’d returned home to put in place.
Striding across the room, he gripped her shoulders, pulling her around as he gripped her chin with one hand and lifted her face to see it in the low light on her bedside table.
And she was crying.
Silent, miserable tears washed over her cheeks and dripped down her face to her neck. Her gray eyes were dark, filled with pain, and silently begging him for something he didn’t know how to give her.
“You need—” Her voice hitched. “You need to leave.”
She tried to pull away from him, to hide her tears from him again.
“And you’d rather stand here with your back to me and cry than fight for a damned thing you want. And you have the nerve to berate me?”
He released her slowly.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she cried out roughly. “I haven’t cared what Daddy thought since the day I realized he was moving the family to Aspen the summer I graduated. And I wasn’t invited,” she sneered tearfully. “You know Rafer; you should give your grandfather more credit. Because the two of you are more alike than you could ever know.”
“Oh, baby, trust me, I’ve heard that accusation more times than you could ever throw it at me.”
He released her quickly before striding a few steps away from her. “At least I’m willing to admit to it. I know damned good and well that I could be a clone of that old bastard. But you, Cami?” He flicked her an angry look. “You won’t even admit to the fact that the only reason you’ve slipped out of my bed at dawn and run like a scared cat over the years is because you didn’t want that son of a bitch father of yours to know who you were screwing.”
He couldn’t get around her. He couldn’t touch her because he didn’t trust himself. Because he was getting hard. He was so damned ready to fuck her again he couldn’t stand it. And how much sense did that make? She had him so mad he could probably bite nails in half, and what was his response? A fucking hard dick and a need to push her over the bed and fill the liquid heat of her pussy with every throbbing inch of it.
“You think you just know it all,” she bit out, the anger suddenly pouring through her, filling her voice, roughening it as her gaze flickered with the same aroused rage.
God, she was getting just as hot, filling with the same fiery blast of lust that he could feel striking at him.
“That son of a bitch father as you call him probably couldn’t care less who I was fucking,” she suddenly yelled back at him. “I’m so low on his fucking radar these days that he only calls me when he needs my signature at the nursing home to authorize payment for medical care. To see her, I have to pay for the expenses her medical insurance doesn’t. Other than that, I’m lucky if I get to see my mother at all, and I sure as hell don’t care what my so-called father thinks.”
Hell, he hadn’t known that. He couldn’t imagine the anger Jaymi would have felt if she had known how their father was using his youngest daughter.
“He didn’t even care when—”
He watched her face suddenly pale.
Her lips clamped closed as she turned quickly away from him once again and pushed her fingers through her hair before clenching the strands in a gesture of pain and rage.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed on her.
“When what, Cami?” he asked softly. “What happened that he didn’t care?”
He could feel a hard, tight ball of suspicion forming in his gut that Cami was hiding something from him. He’d always known when she was hiding something. It seemed even when she was a teenager, before Jaymi’s death, he’d known how to read her much easier than any other female he’d known.
She had been a bright, curious teenager with what he had believed was no more than a strong crush. He’d never imagined in those days that he would end up wanting her more than he wanted air to breathe at times. Or that she would become as vital to him as he could sense her becoming.
Watching her, touching her, seeing her laugh and even cry were experiences he hungered for when it came to Cami.
“I don’t want to talk about this any further,” she told him, her expression closed and tight as she all but glared back at him over her shoulder. “It’ll be dawn soon, Rafer, and you really need to leave. There’s nothing going on, and there’s nothing wrong except the fact that I really don’t want to deal with the aggravation for a man who even refuses to see the danger that’s chasing him. Not to mention the danger chasing his lovers. I have enough problems.”
She had enough problems?
And she was lying to him. What the hell was going on besides those fucking phone calls?
Whatever it was, she had no intentions of telling him. He could see it in her closed expression, in her eyes, which despite the tears were filled with steely determination.
Damn her, he hated it when she lied to him.
His lips tightened as his head jerked up, nostrils flaring in anger.
As if he were going to just walk away after learning some bastard was calling her, threatening her. If he’d known Jaymi had been receiving such calls, he would have ensured she was protected better. But he hadn’t. He couldn’t bring her sister back for her, but he could do everything in his power to make damned sure that no one dared to hurt her as they had hurt her sister.
He would leave now. Not because she didn’t want anyone to see him, because he was suddenly aware if he was seen, then catching the mysterious caller could become that much harder.
“Yeah, just let me get my ass out of here before someone sees who’s slipping out of your house at night and most likely fucking your brains out every chance he gets,” he snorted, his pride still smarting at the fact that she wanted him to leave, despite the fact that he needed to go. “And when you decide to be a woman willing to face me with the truth of whatever you’re hiding, why don’t you just let me know? Because I’ll be damned if I’m going to get down on my knees and beg you for it, Cami. You’re going to have to be woman enough to admit you want it.”
He turned, grabbed the jacket that had fallen to the floor earlier, and stalked from the bedroom.
He hadn’t really believed she would be so stubborn as long as he attempted to ensure no one saw him coming and going. He’d thought he could have her, tease her, and charm her. That there was something burning between them, unresolved and waiting to blossom into something they could have both found some peace within.
It seemed he would never learn. There was no peace to be found in Corbin County. And there was no love, no respect, and no hunger strong enough to combat whatever Cami suddenly found herself frightened of or fighting against. Or was there?
He’d damned sure be finding out what that “something” was, though. Who was calling Cami and threatening her over the relationship developing with Rafe? Or any of the other women who had been involved with the Callahan brothers? What was going on that none of them was aware of?
Perhaps he should have questioned it sooner. Even more, perhaps Cami was right. Because Jaymi wasn’t the only woman who had died that summer who had been involved with the Callahan brothers. There had been one other. And that one had been planning to meet with Crowe to give him something, a picture she thought he would want to see.
The next time Crowe had seen her, though, she had been a picture in the paper, the latest victim of the Sweetrock Rapist.
As he slipped from the house, Rafe decided it was time to start questioning the past himself.
Three weeks. Cami waited three weeks for Rafer to return. For him to come back to the house, demand entrance into both her home as well as her body. Twenty-one days later, he still hadn’t arrived.
The waiting was destroying her nerves. She swore she had lost five of that extra ten pounds she carried pacing the darkened house each night.
She didn’t bother turning on lights. What was the use?
The waiting had so stretched her nerves that she found herself unable to stand one more night of it.
She wasn’t waiting another minute.
She was horny, she was pissed, she was bored, and she was ready to socialize. For at least a few hours.
Thankfully, the county’s only bar and local nightspot was only a few blocks from her home, on the north side of the city square.
Bartlette’s Bar and Grill also hosted the county’s meals and drinks for the weekend socials. Throughout the rest of the year, customers could count on a band every weekend and, weather permitting, the wide sidewalk to spill out to when the crush of the crowd became overpowering.