Absolute Zero (48 page)

“They…believed you?”

“Of course! Look at me! I’m next in line for Dean of the Department.  The staunch family man, church-going, all around contributor to society…and look at you, ugly as sin, exceptionally intelligent, quiet little freak that you are. By the time I walked out of there, I had them thinking you were a perfect candidate for a school massacre. It was fantastic, trust me.”

Her hands were shaking so badly she had to clasp them in front of her.

“Where are Mom and Sophie?” she asked again on a shaky breath.

“Don’t worry about them. Worry about you,” he stated as he pulled something from his lap under the table. Anne’s eyes widened at the sight of a small gun in his hands.

“S…Sam…” she stammered, her eyes never leaving the object once it made an appearance.

“What? You look a little nervous, Anne. You should be. You leave me no choice, really. If they talk to her, and believe me, they will…she’ll crack. I can’t have that,” he stated seriously.

“What did you do to them, Sam?” she all but whispered.

“Anne? I have to say, I thought about shooting you. I would love nothing more than to watch you bleed out all over this kitchen floor, but I have something so much more in store for you. I’m going to give you something to think about for the rest of your shitty life. It’s called guilt.” He aimed the gun in her direction with a small smile. “You should see your face right now. Are you going to piss yourself? I wish you would,” he stated in a low voice.

Anne stood frozen, her eyes darting from his face to the gun and back again.

“No matter what you do, you will
never
be able to forget this. You’re going to be so fucked up; I wish I could witness it, but…” He turned the gun toward himself, placing it under his chin.

“Being too smart is your biggest liability, Anne. You’ll see.”

Her body jolted from the loud bang, her eyes closing for a split second before opening again to view the carnage in front of her. One moment he was there, the next he was…gone. Her knees gave way as she slumped to the floor, her eyes blinking but unseeing. She took gulps of air, trying desperately to fight back the black spots dancing across her eyes, the hazy buzzing taking over her brain.

Thoughts of her Mother and her sister overtook her body as she fought through the debilitating pressure in her head. She crawled toward the nearest cabinet, hers eyes squeezed shut as she felt blindly along the surface. She attempted to stand on shaking legs, staggering, gulping for air, her hands feeling for the wall before she fell through the opening to the hall.

“Mom?” she choked out as she crawled on the soft carpet. Her eyes opened as slits. The bathroom to her right was empty; the door to her left was open, revealing the large bedroom her parents shared. Empty. She continued to crawl toward the back of the house, toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms above.

“Mom!” she croaked out in a louder voice as she ascended the staircase on her hands and knees. It took forever and each step became more difficult as a sense of impending disaster seemed to loom over her aching body.

Please, no. Please…

Her sister’s room was empty, leaving only two more rooms. The guest bedroom was empty leaving…her room.

Two sets of feet, one large, one small hung from the edge of her bed as an anguished scream ripped from her throat.

They held tightly to each other even in death, she thought as the blackness overtook and she finally succumbed.

Warm breath and soft pressure to the side of one temple, a body that was constricted on all sides and someone murmuring something…

She opened her eyes and blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings. She was on the wrong side of the couch, seated on…Ian’s lap as he held her tightly and kissed her face tenderly.

“Hey! No…” she attempted to push off to no avail.

“Shhh. I had to hold you, you were shaking so badly, love,” he stated in a gentle voice before kissing her forehead. She immediately stopped fidgeting.

“Was I…did I talk? Did you hear…any of that?”

“Aye.”

“Wonderful. Do you at least feel like the World’s biggest asshole now?

“No. I’d do it over again,” he stated simply.

She turned in his arms to glare at him. “Are you serious?”

“Aye, I’m serious. You already admitted you never would have told me. I’m horrified thinking about what you must have gone through, but I at least understand now. I think I may love you even more and if I’m not mistaken, I’d say you have feelings for me too.”

“Yeah. I have feelings for you. They aren’t good ones…” she stated in a flat tone.

“Liar. You should have seen your face when you turned around and saw me earlier. You have feelings for me. I just wish you would trust me.”

Trust
. Ha.
What would he know about trust?
She almost opened her mouth to ask him about selling the company but clamped it shut. To do so would only serve to get Rand in hot water for telling her. “You want me to trust you?” she asked after a few moments of silence.

“Aye.”

“Tell me about
your
life. Tell me why you hate your Mother so much, tell me why you freak out every time your wife is mentioned; tell me what happened. You see? I know things about you, and I don’t bring them up because I have this thing called
class
or maybe it’s
tact
, I’m not sure. So go ahead, since we’re being so
honest
, here.” She managed to push away from his lap to flop on the other side of the couch once again.

He stared at her in contemplative silence.

“Oh please, nothing you could say is any worse than what I’ve just puked up. Let’s hear it.” She hugged her knees to her chest and waited.

“Fine,” he finally breathed out. “My mother. My mother is an addict, oddly enough, she’s addicted to prescription pain medication which is slightly amusing since I own a pharmaceutical company, right?” he stated with a sardonic smile. “I have to give her credit, though. When I was a kid, it used to fascinate me, observing her reaction to the pills she’d take. She was such a selfish mess, still is, actually. Do you know that Lena and I have different fathers? I don’t know where hers is. Mine died of an overdose years ago. Apparently my family has an unnatural predilection for drugs. Luckily I don’t take ‘em, I just make ‘em,” he stated before a small bitter sounding laugh emerged from his throat.

“And that’s why you…hate her? I heard you that night she came over…”

He stared at her for a few moments before his eyes dropped to his lap. “Not because of that,” he seemed to mumble. “I…maybe it’s for Lena to tell…”

She watched him closely, his jaw clenched and unclenched and he swallowed before lifting his eyes to hers again. “This is…” he started before taking a breath. “I was a bad kid,” he started.

“I know. Skye, er
Mrs. Craigh
told me how you two met,” she answered.

“Aye, but no…not that. Umm…geez Anne, this is so hard…”

“Really?” she raised one brow.

“Really. Only a few people know this…”

She waited. He swallowed almost nervously but never let his eyes wander from hers.

“Lena was at a party, Mom was supposed to pick her up but she never showed. To be honest, I still can’t remember the excuse she used, but I knew she was high, she was pretty much high most of the time back then, anyway. Lena called the house and I was there. She asked if I’d pick her up. The party was getting a bit…rowdy, she said and she was nervous. She was fifteen at the time. I had a…lass at the house, which for me was really something because of…” he waved his hand in front of his lips. “I know Mrs. Craigh told you about this,” he added. “I wasn’t exactly the most attractive lad, but anyway…I didn’t
want
to pick her up. I wanted to…well, I guess you know what I
wanted
to do. It would have been my first time and…well, let’s just say I borrowed the neighbor’s car and picked her up instead but I certainly took my time doing it. By the time I got there…” he shook his head as his eyes wandered toward the floor.

“There were three of them trying to hold her down. She was in the backyard when I found them. They didn’t get…very far, she was a good fighter, Lena was. Let’s just say…I spent a little time in jail.”

“Why would you…?”

“I beat the hell out of them, Anne. Sent them all to the hospital. I was seventeen at the time. I…hmm,” he clamped his lips shut for a moment before lifted his eyes to hers.

“That pretty much turned my life around. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a place like that, but it sure seemed as if I was headed in that direction. Talk about a bunch of eejits…” his eyes widened slightly to emphasize his words. “I put myself through college, I borrowed money, I worked my arse off, I went back to school again, and here I am,” he finished with a slight shrug. “I guess in a way, I should thank that woman for being such a waste.”

“I guess that explains your obsessive need for punctuality,” Anne commented quietly.

“Pfft. Like that’s sooo bad, Anne. It’s called respect for someone else’s time. You’re right, though. It probably
is
the reason, and yet I don’t think about that. I just know that I have a schedule, and it’s
always
tight. I can’t stand tardiness. I make no apologies for it,” he stated smugly.

“Fine. Tell me about Shelby.”

“What? No, aww Annie isn’t that enough for one setting? I don’t feel like dredging…”

“Dredge it up, Ian,” she stated forcefully, cutting off his protest.

His eyes lifted toward the ceiling as he shook his head and blew out a noisy breath.

“I’m waiting,” she added watching as his eyes lowered. He leveled that intense look at her that would normally serve to cause her stomach to flip.

“What do you want to know? Why does it even matter? Can’t ya just be satisfied in knowing that I love you more than any other woman or quite possibly any other person I’ve ever met? Hmm?”

“Nope,” she answered simply although her pulse pounded at his admission.

“Annie, I’ll make you a deal.
IF
you come over here and let me hold you? I’ll tell you.”

“No deal. I’m still pissed off about the investigator, I’m just being civil right now because I want to hear this,” she admitted truthfully.

“Annie…”

She gave a quick eye roll and a shrug. “Still waiting,” she mumbled.

“My god, woman. I should promote you to a unit manager, geez,” he stated under his breath.

“Stop redirecting.”

His fists clenched and unclenched in his lap, she noticed before looking up and locking onto his dark blue gaze.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“I know you moved here, she chased you, you married her, might have been business related at first, you bought her an obscenely big house on a hill, she died and now everything in town is pretty much named after her…that’s about it,” she rattled off.

“Hmm,” he seemed to consider his words carefully for a moment. “Who told you that?”

“Shay. And hey! I didn’t even have to
pay
her for that,” she stated in a serious tone.

“Annie…” he started, one brow cocked before she interrupted him.

“Just…talk,” she waved her hand erratically between them before flopping it on her lap.

“I…” he cleared his throat and shifted his position on the couch. He looked so incredibly uncomfortable to her. “I decided to pursue a company in the states, mostly for tariff purposes and distribution. I came here, I met Shelby the second day I was here during negotiations. I was at Connelly’s and this woman approached me at the bar. Sat right down and introduced herself and to be honest, she took my breath away. It was flattering that someone so…lovely would be interested in
me
. I guess at first, being with her was a boost for a guy like me. I was trying to buy the company and the employees were extremely leery. I’d never really been in a situation like that before. Shelby and I started dating after a bit. After a few months she started talking about marriage – more like a business proposition and the more she pursued it, the more I thought about it… so we did,” he stated before pausing for a long breath.

“I thought I fell in love with her at some point. I thought even though it started out as a mutually beneficial agreement, it turned into something more. We even started trying to…well, she wanted a child and we tried for a year and…nothing. I was traveling back and forth to Europe but I tried to be here in the States as much as possible and it didn’t seem to bother her at all, to be honest. I never really thought about that, I was so wrapped up in growing the company and maybe if I paid more attention…” he stopped and his eyes focused on a point beyond Anne.

“I came back to the States and she was sick. She wouldn’t tell me why. She was feverish, pale, nauseous. I called her Doctor to make an appointment for her even though she told me not to. It got so bad, she finally went. He ran her through a battery of tests, including an MRI, that’s when they found the brain tumor but that wasn’t what made her sick. I found out…” he let out a rather long, drawn out breath before his eyes closed.