Cullen's Bride (17 page)
Authors: Fiona Brand
Cullen was just removing a casserole from the oven. He glanced up as she walked in. “I was just going to wake you ”
Her stomach grumbled as Cullen set the dish down on a heat pad on the table. Plates and silverware were already set out, as well as a bowl of steaming rice and a crisp, green salad. “You can cook,” she said faintly.
For a second she could have sworn he was going to smile; then he shrugged. “It's nothing fancy. When you get dropped in a foreign country for weeks at a time with nothing to eat but army rations, you learn to improvise. Fast.”
Rachel pulled a chair out and sat as Cullen pushed a plate laden with rice and casserole toward her. Normally the amount he'd just served up would have made her blanch. Now she helped herself to salad and barely restrained herself from starting before he did.
Before Cullen sat down he walked to the fridge, poured a large glass of milk and set it down in front of her. “For the baby,” he murmured
As Cullen pulled out his chair and sat, the enormity of what they were doing suddenly hit Rachel. They were married: Husband and wife. This was their first meal together. Normally the wedding breakfast was a ritualistic affair with speeches and ceremony. When she'd married Adam there had been over a hundred guests sharing in the ritual, toasting their good health and long life together, but in all the excitement the symbolic aspect of sharing a table, the intimacy of eating together, hadn't occurred to her. It did now. With the stillness of night closed in tight around the farmhouse, the shadows barely pushed back by the lone bulb screwed into the kitchen ceiling, the simple meal Cullen had prepared seemed more steeped in symbolismâmore deeply linkingâthan that other, more formal, wedding breakfast.
Rachel picked up her knife and fork and tasted the casserole; it was plain, and it needed salt, but it was edible. Cullen didn't seem to notice the lack of flavour. He ate with a steady, relentless appetite that reminded her of her brothers. The food on his plate was needed fuel for his body; he neither liked nor disliked, and ate everything with an unbiased concentration. If he was filling his truck with petrol, he would probably have the same expression on his face.
Evidently he wasn't the least bit bothered by the symbolism of eating their first meal together.
By the time Rachel had finished her dinner, Cullen had polished off his second impressive helping and was loading his plate into a gleaming new dishwasher. Glancing around the kitchen, Rachel noticed that the stove matched the dishwasher, and the refrigerator and freezer also looked suspiciously new. She hadn't investigated the laundry yet, but she would lay odds there were a brand new washer and drier in there. A curl of hope started deep inside her. If Cullen had spent all this money on the house, then maybe, just maybe. he had hopes for the future, too.
Rachel had just loaded her plate in the dishwasher when she became aware that Cullen was leaning against the counter, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his jeans, watching her. “Dan Holt showed me that letter you took in to him.”
Rachel blinked at his bald statement and closed the dishwasher. He'd said the words quietly enough, but she could hear the force behind his calm statement So, this was what that air of condensed fury had been about. Cullen was intensely male, protective and possessive. He hadn't liked it that she'd kept the letter from him. “It was just a sick joke. I thought the police should deal with it.”
“You didn't think that I should know someone was making... allegations about me?”
“You're not a murderer. That piece of paper is a tasteless prank by someone who should be seriously considering therapy.”
Cullen didn't move from his relaxed stance against the counter, but Rachel didn't mistake his stillness for indolence. He was coiled tight and ready to explode.
“You're right about the therapy part,” he noted softly. “But did you consider that this person might be dangerous? Baby, I could shake you. Whoever put that message together means business. If anything like this happens again, I want to know about it.”
“Aren't you making too big a deal out of this? Any schoolkid could have put that message together.”
“If you really thought that, you wouldn't have taken the letter in to Dan. That message wasn't the work of some schoolkid. There were no fingerprints on the paper besides yours, Rachel. It was absolutely clean.”
A cold chill went down Rachel's spine. No prints? He had to be joking. Of course, even if there had been prints, there was no guarantee of finding out who they belonged to. The perpetrator would have to have a police record for that to happen. But no prints at all
Abruptly, Cullen pushed himself away from the counter and prowled the length of the kitchen. When he spoke, his voice was low and clipped. “This morning I went in to Fairley to lay formal charges against Frank Trask for illegal discharge of a weapon and attempted arson. Last night Trask tried to burn this house down.”
“Burn the house,” Rachel echoed, automatically following Cullen, feeling the same crawling sensation she'd felt when she'd first read the anonymous message. “Why would he want to do that? Surely he's not still carrying a grudge about you helping Dane and his wife?”
“I don't know what thoughts go through Trask's head. But I'm pretty sure the arson attempt and the letter are related. Someone wants me out of Riverbend, and they're not too particular how they go about it, or who they hurt in the process.”
Rachel frowned. “But why?”
Cullen's hands moved as if he were going to touch her. With a savage oath, he strode several paces away and gestured toward one of the chairs. “Sit down, and I'll try to explain. Maybe when you've heard what I've got to say you'll make the sensible choice and go back to Auckland.”
Cullen watched Rachel sit down and jerked his fingers through his hair, cursing the naked feeling at the back of his neck, and wondering why he'd ever let Blade and the rest of the crew talk him into having his hair cut. Respectability had never bothered him a damn before, and it had always been too late to worry about it in Riverbend, anyway.
Just like it was too late for a lot of things. He'd never voluntarily talked about the hellish situation when his father had died. He didn't want to tell Rachel now. His first and strongest instinct was to tell her nothing, to keep her cocooned and as happy as he could through this pregnancy But events had forced his hand. Rachel had to know what was at stake, for her own safety and that of their child. “You've probably heard enough gossip to piece my past together,” he said flatly. “I'm going to give you the unadulterated version.”
Taking a deep breath, he settled his hands on the back of a chair. “My mother left Riverbend as soon as she could after giving birth to me. According to my father. Celeste was wild, a drifter. He didn't know where she came from or where she went, or that she had money Ahstair Carson's wife, Mae, looked after me until 1 was old enough to move in with my father, and then...” He paused, his hands tightening on the chair. “I had what you might call a dysfunctional childhood. In lay terms, my father beat hell out of me whenever he'd had too much to drink. And sometimes just for fun.”
“I heard you ran away,” Rachel said softly.
“I made a career of it I grew up fast, and I grew up hard. I was shunted out of this town when I was nine and didn't make it back until I turned eighteen. Riverbend didn't know what hit it. I was hell on wheels, literally. The whole place must have sighed with relief when I finally left. And when the cops picked me up and tossed me in a cell for the murder of my father, no one was in the least surprised. I was the perfect suspect.”
The images sprang at him, as raw and hard-edged as if it had all happened yesterday. His knuckles whitened as he related the incident when he'd walked in on Caroline Hayward and his father, the ensuing fight, Ian Logan's death, the pieces of the puzzleâlike the too expensive whiskeyâthat just didn't fit.
Rachel met his gaze levelly. “So, someone got your father drunk, beat him up, then left him on the side of the road, and now this person's scared you'll find out who he, or she, is.”
“That's the only way I can figure it. There was no way my father could or would afford to drink a fancy whiskey like Chivas Regal.” His mouth twisted. “He liked quantity, not quality.”
“Then it follows that the attacker had to be someone who
could
afford to buy Chivas.”
could
afford to buy Chivas.”
Cullen inclined his head. “I'd lay odds that whoever's encouraging me to leave town panicked when they heard we were getting married. Suddenly it looked like I was going to stay.”
Rachel's gaze narrowed. “You know who left your father on the side of the road.”
Cullen couldn't prevent a quick smile of approval, but even so, her quickness startled him. She was putting the pieces of the puzzle together almost as fast as he could give them to her. “I think Trask was involved, but only as hired muscle. The other person is more shadowy, but I'm pretty certain it's Richard Hayward.”
Rachel's eyes widened. “My God,” she muttered. “What a mess.”
Cullen wasn't about to argue. It was one hell of a mess, and threatening to explode all over Riverbend. “I imagine Hayward wouldn't want any dirt rubbing off on his professional reputation. Being implicated in a murder investigation, even if he was never formally charged, would kill his business.”
“He doesn't deserve to be practicing,” Rachel said heatedly.
“That's if he is involved. All I've got is supposition and gut instinct. I don't have one shred of proof. I could run all this by Dan, but seriously, if you were a cop, who would you believe? A lawyer who has a stolid standing in the community? Or a man who has no rootsâwho makes a living out of violence?”
A morepork hooted somewhere outside and was answered by a more distant cry, the fridge hummed steadily, and the sturdy old house settled in for the night with creaks and groans that were oddly peaceful.
The scrape of Rachel's chair as she got to her feet shattered the momentary quiet. “Is
that
why you won't let yourself get close to anyone?” she demanded, stalking around the table toward him. “The reason we can't have a normal relationship is because you'd sooner roll over for a creep like Hayward than prove how wrong everyone has been?” She jabbed a finger at his chest, and the smooth langourous flow of her voice metamorphosed into cool and clipped. “Or maybe it's easier for you to believe your bad press than take a shot at commitment? I never would have labelled you a coward, Cullen.”
that
why you won't let yourself get close to anyone?” she demanded, stalking around the table toward him. “The reason we can't have a normal relationship is because you'd sooner roll over for a creep like Hayward than prove how wrong everyone has been?” She jabbed a finger at his chest, and the smooth langourous flow of her voice metamorphosed into cool and clipped. “Or maybe it's easier for you to believe your bad press than take a shot at commitment? I never would have labelled you a coward, Cullen.”
Cullen caught Rachel's hand and clenched his jaw against the need to jerk her against him and drown in her sweet scent, her delicious softness. He'd touched her more today than he ever had, except for the times when they'd almost made love, then finally had made love, and it was driving him crazy. “The hell with Hayward and his games,” he rasped. “If I wanted to stay in Riverbend, he wouldn't stop me.”
She blinked and shook her head. “So, why are you leaving?”
Cullen stared at her in open disbelief. “Haven't you heard a word I've ever said? I'm not the kind of guy you should be spending any time with at all! I'm too rough, too damned hard to make good husband and father material.”
Her tawny eyes flared, making her skin seem even creamier, her hair richer, darker, and Cullen realised that despite Rachel's apparent calm, she wasn't backing off an inch. She was furious, but controlled with it, and the knowledge made his heart slam and his blood pound thickly through his veins. He found he liked fighting with her. The thought should have appalled him, sent him running, but instead he was aroused. It was all he could do to keep from taking her down to the floor, stripping her clothes off, shoving her beneath him and doing the very thing that had got them in this mess in the first place.
“And I thought I was dumb as a post about relationships,” she drawled. “How would you know, when you've obviously never had one!”
Cullen should have expected the blow, given his knowledge of Rachel's temper, but her fist shooting toward his chest took him by surprise. Even so, his hand shot up, catching her wrist before the punch could land. The movement swung her body into his. Her breasts flattened against his chest, their knees bumped, and her belly fetched up against the solid, aching ridge of his sex. A groan ripped from Cullen's throat. Before he could control the primitive urge, his hips jerked, grinding himself even deeper, harder, against her soft warmth. Rachel wasn't moving; she was simply resting against him, accepting his hold on her hand and wrist. Accepting the unruly pressure of his sex nudging her stomach.
Slowly, breathing hard with the effort, Cullen steadied her, then stepped away. When he spoke, the words were scraped from his throat, guttural with the effort of forcing each dark syllable out. “Fifteen years ago, on just about this precise spot, I hit my father hard enough to put a hairline fracture in his jaw. My knuckles were bruised and split from that one blow.”
Rachel was breathing just as fast as he was, and he saw with a jolt that she was aroused as well as angry. Another choking wave of lust slammed through him. Damn, this wasn't helping. She should be staring him down with a haughty, patrician look instead of watching him with frank sensual hunger.
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