Kiss in the Dark (25 page)

And therein lay the problem. Therein had always, always lain the problem. “No,” she whispered. Of course not. “Dylan St. Croix prefers to charge headfirst into enemy lines, with no regard for consequences.”

From behind them, a loud horn blared obnoxiously, prompting Beth to jerk toward the road, where against the bright wash of early morning sun, the green light waited. She got them moving again, this time faster than before.

Dylan sat only inches away, but he might as well have been in another car. Another state. She felt the distance settling between them, stretching and thickening, the years between them stacking right back up.

“You could go to jail,”
she said through the tightness in her throat. “You could leave your child without a father. All because you had to prove some stupid point.”

Dylan just stared at her. “Christ,”
he swore softly. “Who did you think you were making love with in the mountains? I’m not Ward Cleaver and I never will be.”

Beth turned onto his street, the bright sun glinting through the pines almost blinding her. “This isn’t about making love—that has never been our problem. This is about the fact our world is blowing up around us, but I can’t see past
you!”

And because of that she’d put their child at risk.

Just like before.

But she didn’t tell him about the accident, didn’t want him to know. He’d go wild. Even more passion would blow up between them.

And that, she didn’t want ever, ever again.

He shoved a hand through his closely cut hair, looking nothing like the sorcerer from the night before. He looked all man now, all angry, dangerous man. “Bethany, I swear to you, everything’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not!” she exploded. “It
can’t
be.” She turned into his driveway, but barely saw the pines stretching skyward, the house looming beyond. She could see only two tombstones south of town, cold, silent reminders of the price of being blind to the world around her.

“No matter how badly it hurts,” she said, fighting the emotion scratching at her throat, “I can’t let this thing between us blind me into thinking otherwise. I’ve done that before, Dylan, and people got hurt. They
died.”

“This thing,”
he clipped out, his voice acrid, “is love.”

The hurt was swift and immediate, a jagged, tearing pain. She swallowed hard, but the emotion burning her throat didn’t lessen. More than anything, she wanted to erect one of those ice walls, the kind she’d created in the days after the ambush nine years before, when she’d been quite sure her heart would simply bleed out. But
she couldn’t find those walls now, knew they’d all melted away.

For years she’d lived in a pretend world where the passion she felt for Dylan didn’t still burn hot and bright. But now was not the time for playing make-believe. Everything inside her was too jagged and broken, just like all those years before.
This
was what she’d been trying to avoid. This horrible, out-of-control feeling, that if she let go even the slightest bit, her entire world would spin away from her.

“Everything’s happened too fast,”
she said, needing him to understand, knowing he wouldn’t,
“…
the murder, the pregnancy, the miscarriage scare, and now Janine. I need time to catch my breath.”

Dylan’s eyes went dead flat. “People ‘together’ don’t retreat, Bethany.”

“People ‘together’ don’t issue ultimatums,”
she countered quietly.

“You’re carrying my child.”

Instinctively, protectively, she put a hand to her stomach. “I know whose child I’m carrying.”

“Then turn off the car.”

She wanted to. Dear God, she wanted to do as he instructed, to turn off the car and go inside. She wanted to go back to the mountains. Go back to before.

“You’re the one always accusing me of pretending, Dylan. And you were right. But I can’t do that anymore. I can’t bury my head in the sand and ignore the truth. Lance is dead.
Dead!
Janine has been beaten and there’s a hideous paper trail leading straight to you. But I don’t care! All I want is to be in your arms and that’s
wrong!”

“And you’re so determined to prove you’re not like your mother that you’re just going to walk away.”

She stiffened. “This has nothing to do with my mother.”

“The hell it doesn’t,”
he bit out, his expression suddenly granite. “You think feeling is bad. You think it’s a crime to want, to need.”

“Dylan—”

“What happened to the woman in the mountains?” he asked pointedly. “The one who came alive in my arms, who came back with a rope when she could have run, who displayed more courage than armies of men? When did she become a coward?”

Panic flared deep within. The truth shattered. “She came home,” Beth said quietly. “She came back to the real world, where nothing has changed. Call me a coward if you want to, but this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” She paused, swallowed, forced herself to continue. “Just because we have great sex doesn’t change the fact that this
…
this out-of-control feeling is
not
something I can live with.”

“Christ,” he swore in a dead voice that terrified more than all the heat and bluster. “You’re going to let the scared little girl win. You’re going to retreat to her world of pristine white, just because things got muddy.”

“Dylan—” Her voice broke on his name. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” With stunning abruptness he threw open the door and climbed out of the car, strode toward his house.

He didn’t look back.

The swiftness of it all robbed her of breath. She tried to grasp what had happened, but was left with nothing but those jagged pieces she’d tried to hold together. They shattered now, raining down and slicing to the bone.

“Goodbye,” she whispered to the gorgeous house of wood and glass. Through the silence, she would have sworn she heard her heart shatter just like that glass door so long ago. “Goodbye.”

Putting the car in reverse and backing into the street was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she knew it was for the best. No matter how desperately she wished otherwise, there could be no future for her and Dylan. When their paths crossed, everything else went up in flames.

She couldn’t let that happen to her baby.
Their
baby.

Chapter 15

«
^
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Z
orro lay on the back porch, perfectly centered in a swatch of early morning sun. The cat stretched languidly, reminding Dylan too damn much of the woman who’d backed out of his driveway, his life, not thirty minutes before. He’d stood under the cold spray of a shower most of that time, but eventually the cubicle of ceramic tile had turned into a prison cell, forcing Dylan to get the hell out as fast as he could. He’d barely taken time to dry, just pulled on a pair of old gym shorts and gone to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice, then headed outside.

Now he stood on the porch, hands curled around the railing. Beneath his fingers, he saw the small white flowers of the jasmine vines he’d planted upon moving into the house, then nurtured ever since. At the time, he hadn’t let himself think about the fact Bethany loved jasmine, that she wore jasmine.

Now the tangled vines taunted.

He wanted to feel anger toward her. He wanted to feel contempt. After everything they’d been through, she still couldn’t accept him for the man he was. She still thought passion was poison.

But he could find no anger. Only love. A love strong enough, pure enough, to let her go before he systematically destroyed her. He could live with a lot, withstand a lot, but he would never survive breaking Bethany. Not again.

That’s why he had walked away. When their lives tangled like the vines around the porch rail, Bethany paid the price. She deserved so much more than that. She deserved the serenity she’d always wanted, the fairy tale he told her didn’t exist. Because of the child, they’d never fully be apart, but nor could they be fully together.

No matter what it cost him, he would never, ever hurt her again. He had to figure out who was playing them like a puppet, and what the hell had gone down with Janine White. He couldn’t shake the bad, bad feeling that Lance’s murder and the subsequent ordeal for Bethany were somehow linked to the alleged file found in Lance’s desk.

The ringing phone interrupted his thoughts. He went inside, picked up the kitchen phone, but found only silence.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

Nothing.

“I don’t play games,” he said, but then the line went dead, and a dial tone droned into his ear.

Swearing softly, he returned to the porch and picked up his orange juice, drank deeply.

I don’t
love you, Dylan. I never did.

Nine years ago, he’d accepted Bethany’s denial and simply walked away. Now a stark realization hit him hard. Normally he was a crusader of the truth. He pushed and prodded until he got it. But then, he’d merely accepted her broken words as gospel. Now he knew why, what a hypocrite he was. In preaching the truth, he’d been lying to himself all along.

The irony burned. Once, he’d sworn he would kill for her. He just hadn’t realized the person he would kill was himself.

“Brooding becomes you, Dylan.”

The amused words jolted through him, prompting him to spin toward the side of the house. She stood there with her hair loose and silky around her face, a glint in her pale blue eyes, and a gun in her hand.

* * *

Bethany slowed the car in front of the beautiful house that had never been a home. Yellow police tape no longer stretched across the perimeter. The tulips had faded. The petunias and impatiens were wilted from thirst.

A chill ran through her as she realized she couldn’t live here anymore, didn’t even want to go inside. No way could she return to that sterile white life, not after Dylan showed her so many evocative colors—the clear blue of mountain lakes and companionship, the green of old-growth pine forests and laughter, the vivid red of flowers and desire.

The truth hit her hard. All her life she’d worked hard to not rock the boat, not hurt anyone or anything. She didn’t want to destroy like her mother had, but with startling clarity, she realized she
had
destroyed. Herself. And Dylan. She’d staunchly denied her feelings for him, believing the passion between them would ruin everything in its path. It took finding the courage to walk away to show her how wrong she’d been. Sitting there in her idling car, staring at the gorgeous sterile house, she realized it was the denial of passion that hurt, the loss of it that made her chest so tight she could hardly breathe.

Rattled from the accident the night before, the woman she’d become had deferred to the girl she’d once been, letting her make a terrible mistake. Walking away, pretending, wasn’t the solution. Fighting for what she wanted was.

Dylan St. Croix was the only man she’d ever loved. The only man she could imagine sharing her life, her child, with. She deserved his anger, but no way could she just walk away. She was a strong woman. She needed—wanted—a strong man.

No way was she going to let Dylan St. Croix write “The End.”

* * *

“Hello, darling.”

Dylan went very still. “Yvonne.” He took in the malevolent light in her crystalline blue eyes, the gun in her hand, and with cold certainty realized Yvonne’s preoccupation with Lance’s murder had nothing to do with getting a story. “What the hell are you doing?”

She laughed. “Every good reporter knows you can’t just sit around and wait for stories to happen. Sometimes you have to nudge.”

Christ.
“Put down the gun,” he instructed, starting toward her. But his legs would barely move. They felt leaden.

Again, she laughed. “What’s the matter Dilly, darling? Not feeling so good?”

The world swayed. Suddenly there were two Yvonnes, two guns. “What the hell?”

She motioned toward the empty glass on the porch rail. “I would have thought a smart man like you would know better than to leave a drink unattended.”

He fought the fog thickening through him, the web spreading over his muscles and his organs. “Y-you d-drugged me?”

“A girl can never have enough insurance. A big strong boy like you wouldn’t think twice about charging me…” she waved the gun
“…
wrestling away my little friend here.” She flashed her infamous on-air shark smile. “Now you can’t.”

Disbelief whirred through him. He reached for the rail, held on, sucked in a breath. Yvonne Kelly had a reputation for going for the jugular, he’d just never realized she’d go for the kill.

“It’s really quite tragic,” she said blithely. “Lance always said you didn’t know how to leave well enough alone.”

He blinked, holding his eyes open when they wanted to slide closed. “Wh-hat are you t-talk-king about?”

The two Yvonnes stepped closer, “Prince Lance’s death, of course. If the cops can’t bring themselves to arrest Little Miss Perfect, if her fingerprints on the murder weapon aren’t enough evidence, then maybe a suicide will make them stop and think.”

“S-u-u-cide?” The word roared through him. “You m-mean murder.”

A black-and-white blur ambled over to Yvonne, weaving between her legs. She muttered something and shooed it away.

“Bethany has fooled everyone into thinking she’s pure as the driven snow, but you don’t have that same affliction, now do you? You like things dirty. Everyone knows you play rough.” Another laugh, this one laced with malice. “No one will question whether the nifty little file I planted on your misdeeds is fact or fiction. No one will know I’ve elevated creative writing to a whole new art. No one will care. You’ll be dead, the paper trail will be stark, the poor, poor D.A. relieved, and the investigation into Lance’s death will stop cold.”

The effort to stand grew more difficult. Dylan concentrated on his leg muscles, refusing to let them buckle. Maybe the lethargy sapped his strength, but his mind clicked rapidly, the nasty pieces falling into place with brutal precision. “You k-killed him,” he realized sickly.

Yvonne’s face was one blur now, but he would have sworn be saw a flash of pain.

“I loved him,” she said thickly. “I loved him with all my heart.”

“Th-then why?”

She swiped the tangled blond hair blowing into her face. “He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand how deeply I loved him, how far I’d go to prove it. For over a year he shared my bed. I gave him everything he wanted—everything, no matter how kinky, how dirty. All I wanted in return was a commitment. That shouldn’t be asking too much, should it?” Her voice broke, and for a moment there was only an ungodly silence. “He thought he could just dump me like trash and move on. He thought he could walk away.”

The drug clouded Dylan’s vision, but the picture in his mind crystallized with startling detail. “S-so you killed him in-instead?”

“No!” Yvonne shouted. “No! I loved him! I understood him, thought like him, told him I’d make sure no one ever discovered his dirty little secret.”

“W-w hat secret?”

A malevolent smile twisted Yvonne’s lips. “We could have had it all, Lance and me. I wanted the same things he did, namely Kent English out of office and Lance on his way to the top.”

“English?”
Dylan asked, realizing he had to keep her talking. It was like some cruel joke standing there staring at Yvonne and her gun, knowing what she had in store for him, but also knowing that if he followed instinct and let go of the porch rail to charge her, she’d gut-shoot him before he took two steps.

“He didn’t deserve to be D.A. He was as amoral as the scum he sent to prison, and I had the pictures to prove it.”

The pictures.
Of the D.A. and a prostitute. The evidence of blackmail Yvonne had used to try and incriminate him.

“But he didn’t understand, told me I was crazy. Told me he was going to turn me in.” Pain flashed in her blue eyes. “I had no choice but to point out he was no more innocent than me. That I knew about his shenanigans at the infertility clinic. I knew about the bribe. And I was prepared to let all of Portland know, too, starting with Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. Not so good for a man who’d built his reputation on family values.”

Dylan just stared. “H-how did you f-find out?”

“Is in
an investigative reporter!” she snapped. “I know the importance of covering my bases.”

“But you didn’t expose him,” Dylan pointed out sickly. “You k-killed him.”

The wind whipped harder, sending wisps against Yvonne’s cheekbone. “He called me a coward, told me I didn’t have the guts to go through with it. I didn’t have a choice, don’t you see? I didn’t have a choice but to go to Bethany’s, tell her everything, convince her to press charges.” She stepped closer. “Lance followed, tried to force me to leave.”

“But you w-wouldn’t,” Dylan stalled. With shocking clarity, the scenario flashed through his mind.

“You wanted him to leave. He wouldn’t. Maybe he grabbed you. You only picked up the fire poker to protect yourself. You never meant to hurt—”

He’d been right all along. He’d pegged the scene
exactly,
he’d just had the players wrong.

Crimes of passion, Yvonne herself had said during one of her news reports. Crimes of the heart. A fairy tale gone bad.

She’d all but confessed on-air.

Except no one had been listening.
      

“I loved him,” Yvonne said again. “I never wanted to hurt him. But he kept insisting that I was wrong, that he was sorry, that he’d expose me if I exposed him. He wanted me to leave … but I wouldn’t. He…” Her voice broke, and her eyes filled. “When I called him a coward, he lunged at me. There was only a second to react. He was coming toward me, his face contorted. I didn’t stop to think. I reached for the first thing I could find.”

“The f-fire p-poker.”

“It happened so fast,” Yvonne whispered. “He never knew … I never knew.”

Dylan lifted a hand and wiped the sweat that had started sliding into his eyes. He’d long known Lance’s misdeeds and manipulations would catch up with him one day, but he’d always expected it to pertain to his job, his political aspirations, not the fact he wasn’t man enough to admit
his sterility, that he made up for his own perceived inadequacies by bedding the wrong woman. “You hit Bethany?”

“I had to! I wasn’t guilty of anything but loving him.
She
never did. If he was willing to cast her by the wayside, why shouldn’t I?”

“You hur-rt her.”
The thought filled him with a cold rage. He clung to that emotion, gathered it close, deep, used it for strength.

“Bruises heal,”
Yvonne spat. “A broken heart never does.”

“W-what now?”

Her laugh sounded more like a cackle. “You should have left her alone, Dylan. You should have stayed away. Now I have no choice. I can’t let you and Zito look any further.”

He kept his eyes on the gun. “M-men don’t s-suicide with p-pills.”

“I know that!” she snapped. “And don’t worry, you won’t either. Whoever finds you will find a gun in your hands.”
She waggled it at him. “Lance’s gun at that. Sweet, isn’t it?”

“Never b-believe. No note.”

“No need,”
she countered. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll type something up before I leave.” She took another step. “Now we wait, darling. We wait until you pass out. Unless you’d rather get this all over with now.”