Authors: Patricia Coughlin
Borrowed Bride (9 page)
I wish it had been you who was killed instead of Joel.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she exhaled mightily, wishing she could simply blow the thoughtless words right out of her memory. It had been a rotten thing to think, much less begin to say to someone. Belatedly it occurred to her that perhaps this morning's peace offering to Connor should have included a small verbal apology.
She slapped the basket on top of the desk, irritated with herself for even thinking that she might owe Connor an apology. Frowning, she hastily rummaged through the basket, pushing aside safety pins and tweezers and a tangled tape measure. She was being ridiculous. She was hardly to blame for Connor's irresponsible behavior.
Or was she? If it was true that her words had caused him to drink too much, which in turn caused the hangover that caused him to be careless and injure himself, maybe she was at least partly responsible. Her eyes narrowed. Tough. She still wasn't about to apologize to the man.
At last spying a tiny screwdriver at the very bottom of the basket, she fished it out and headed for the deck with a triumphant smile.
“Is this small enough?” she asked, holding it before him.
He lifted his sunglasses and squinted at it in the sunlight, then extended his hand, palm up. Gaby dropped the screwdriver into it.
“It's short enough,” he said, examining it more closely, “and it looks to be pretty sturdy, too. It just might do the trick.” He looked up at her as the dark glasses dropped back into place and he smiled. “Thanks, I'll give it a try later, after the sun goes down.”
Gaby responded with a curt nod. She really hated it when he smiled at her. It was so damn...distracting. And it had this strange effect on her stomach that made it hard to concentrate on the fact that he was the enemy.
Now that she thought about it, she hated the way he dressed, too. He was wearing an old navy blue T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans that rode low on his hips and conformed to his muscular thighs like a second skin. Granted, there was nothing unusual or sinister about the clothes themselves. What irked her was the effect they had on her senses when he was inside them. Both the shirt and jeans had a soft, oft-washed patina that tempted her to reach out and touch. At least she told herself that was what was tempting her.
She would have loved nothing more than to have been able to say that everything about Connor DeWolfe left her cold and that she couldn't understand why so many women found him irresistible. Come to think of it, she had said exactly that, many times over the years since she'd met him, but always to others, never to herself. She wasn't that good a liar.
Sprawled in one of the two cushioned redwood deck chairs, he had his bare feet propped on the other. Lowering them to the deck, he shoved the empty chair back in order to make room for her.
“Take a load off,” he invited.
Gaby hesitated. In the past twenty-four hours she'd discovered that the entire cabin was a powder keg of memories for her. This corner of the deck where he'd chosen to sit, however, threatened to be the most highly charged of all. The last thing she needed or wanted was for those particular memories that lingered there to go off in her face.
“Come on, Gaby,” he urged quietly. “Sit with me awhile. It's not like you have anything better to do.”
She sniffed. “Actually I have a great deal I could be doing with my time if I weren't being held prisoner here.”
He shrugged as if that were a detail beyond his control. “I guess you'd be on your honeymoon right about now.”
“That was the plan.”
“Where were you headed?”
“We were going to a private island in the Caribbean.”
“Tough break,” he said, neither sounding nor looking the least bit sorry. In fact, he looked pleased.
Rankled, Gaby added, “I could also point out that even doing nothing alone is better than sitting here wasting time with you.”
“You could,” he allowed, appearing regally unscathed by her words. “Or else you could just take off your damn armor for a while and join me in making the best of a bad situation.”
“A situation of your own making,” she felt compelled to add.
“That's still open to debate.”
“Of course, how could I have forgotten? Adam is the one to blame for us being stuck up here together. Is that right?”
“That's how it looks to me,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“Well, as usual your view of things is skewed.”
“Look,” he said, leaning forward with sudden animation, “do you really think I like the idea that Adam has been double-crossing us all this time? That he betrayed Joel and might have even been involved in his death?” The sunglasses hid his eyes from her, but his outrage was unmistakable in the rigid set of his jaw.
It was her turn to shrug. “I really have no idea what you like or don't like.”
He stared at her, his expression gradually relaxing into the familiar lazy smile. “Don't you, now?” he asked as he settled back in his chair once again. “Well, maybe one of these days I'll get around to telling you. For now why don't we just call a truce and put the whole subject of Adam and the explosion off-limits for the time being?”
“Sure. And while we're at it, why don't you just wave your magic wand and zap me back home and we'll forget this whole thing ever happened?”
He sighed, his head bent slightly forward as he rubbed one temple with the tips of his fingers. “Lord, Gabrielle, you don't know how I wish I could.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Today is Sunday. Just give me until Friday. By then the detectives the state police have working the case should have come up with something one way or the other.”
“And if they don't?”
“If they don't,” he repeated slowly, as if weighing the options, “then I'll bring you home anyway if that's what you want. I'll just have to figure out some other way to keep an eye on you.”
“Fine,” she agreed.
Friday was five days away. It seemed like a lifetime, but at least it was something definite she could cling to. As for his intention to keep an eye on her, she would agree to anything to get back home to Toby. Once she was free, she planned to scream so loudly to the police and to file so many charges against him that Connor DeWolfe wouldn't have time to hang around pestering her or anyone else for a long time.
“Now will you sit and talk with me for a while?” he asked.
Gaby hesitated before deciding he was right, after all. It wasn't as if she had anything else to do, and the thought of spending more time shut up alone in her bedroom held no appeal at all. Pulling the chair back a few inches to give herself more legroom, she sat facing him.
Connor immediately reclaimed part of her seat as a footrest, propping one foot up beside her. When she quickly slid over a few inches so they weren't touching, he simply took the space she created as an invitation to prop his other foot there, as well.
“Comfy?” she inquired, regarding him from beneath arched brows.
“Very. Thanks.”
Sighing, Gaby resigned herself to sharing the seat with him. “So, what would you like to talk about?” she asked.
“Why don't you tell me about Toby?”
Her eyes flashed warily. “Why?”
Connor appeared startled by the sharpness of her response. “No particular reason. It just struck me that he would be a safe topic for us to discuss... something we don't seem to share a whole lot of,” he reminded her in a dry tone. “I figured that since he's someone we both love, we...” He stopped and stared at her, one side of his mouth curving upward in a humorless smile. “Does that come as a shock to you, Gaby? It shouldn't.”
“Well, it does. Oh, I know that one of us loves him. I am his mother, after all.”
“Right. And I'm...”
“Yes, do go on,” she urged when he hesitated. “You're what, Connor?”
“I'm...” He paused again, looking out at the still lake, then finally back to her. “I was his father's best friend. It's only natural I take an interest in Joel's son.”
“It may be natural,” she agreed, “but if you don't mind my saying so, it seems rather sudden. Where has this loving interest in Toby been hiding for the past two years?”
“Touché.” His grim smile was pulled tight. “I guess I deserved that. I'm sure my interest must seem rather sudden to you.”
“Meaning it's not?” she asked.
“Meaning it's not,” he replied, once again averting his gaze from the undisguised skepticism in hers. His voice was pitched low, a little halting. “Believe it or not, there hasn't been a day in the past two years that I haven't thought about Toby, and about you, and about all I took from both of you.”
“Look, Connor, you didn'tâ”
He lifted his hand. “Stop, all right? I know exactly how you feel about what happened to Joel and about my part in it. So don't think you have to make nice or say things you don't believe to soothe my feelings just because you're stuck here with me.”
“Believe me, soothing your feelings is not anywhere on my list of priorities,” she assured him with a look of disdain. “Not even close. Honesty is, however. I was simply going to say that deep down I understand that you weren't responsible for what happened to Joel. I know that you never would have intentionally hurt him. I guess I've always known that. I just needed someone to blame, and you were the obvious choice.”
His smile was hard and fleeting. “Nice to know you consider me good for something at least.” He shrugged. “Anyway the fact remains that I thought about you and Toby a lot while I was away. I used to see little kids around his age and I'd wonder what he was like, if he was anything like Joel was as a kid, and what kind of things he liked to do. I thought about you, too, Gaby. I wondered how you were doing.” He glanced at her briefly and shrugged.
“Of course, I knew that you were all set financially. Adam the whiz kid was seeing to that,” he continued, his tone suddenly brittle. “But I wondered how you were making out with all the rest of it. And I wished...I wished there was something I could do to try and make up for all you lost on my account.”
“You sure had a strange way of showing it,” she countered, unable to completely conquer the resentment that had been buried inside for so long.
“I tried,” he reminded her. “Right after Joel was...right after the funeral service. I came by the house to tell you that if there was anything you needed, anything at all that I could do to help, I was there for you and for Toby. You told meâ”
“To go to hell,” Gaby finished for him, her small smile rueful.
“Yeah, that's about the way I remember it.”
“That was inexcusably rude of me. Not that it's any justification, but I was sort of out of it at the time.”
“I know. No excuse necessary. Besides, you only said what a lot of people, myself included, were thinking.”
She eyed him bewilderedly.
“I mean that hell was the right place for me,” he explained. “So I did my best to accommodate everyone.”
“By running off to Mexico?”
A weary smiled edged his mouth. “Believe me, most days it felt like hell. When I first got there, I signed on with a road-building crew that was blasting its way through a mountain of solid granite. Combine all that flying rock with a daily temperature of one hundred ten in the shade, and you come as close to hell as I ever want to get.”
“One hundred ten in the shade,” she echoed, shuddering. “That explains your great tan. But after what happened at the Black Wolf, why on earth would you want to work with...?”
When she hesitated, recalling their truce that was only minutes old, he finished the thought for her.
“Why would I choose to work with explosives?”
Gaby nodded.
He shrugged. “It's what I know best.”
“No,” she said, studying him closely. “I don't think so. I don't think that's the reason at all. I think you were tempting fate.”
She saw his eyes crinkle behind the dark glasses as he gave a short, disbelieving chuckle.
“Oh, really?” he asked. “Tell me, is that an educated guess or simply an ugly rumor?”
“Neither. It's my opinion. I think you were tempting fate,” she said again, but with even more conviction this time. “You felt guilty because you survived the explosion and Joel didn't. There's even a name for itâsurvivor's guilt, I believe it's called. By running off and playing with dynamite every day, you were giving fate a second shot at you, a chance to even the score.”
“Not quite. Oh, I can't deny that I felt plenty of guilt, survivor's and any other kind you can name,” he replied, his jaw suddenly rigid. “I felt guilty believing that the bomb had been meant for me and that thanks to me Joel was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, guilty that I hadn't been able to prevent it or at least get him out of there when I got out. But the rest of your theory is pure crap. Fate can't be tempted, Gaby, I learned that a long time ago.” He stared at the water. “And it doesn't stand around waiting for a second shot at anyone. Fate just does what it damn well pleases, whenever it pleases, and if that happens to upend your life in a major way; screw you.”
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