The Right Bride? (27 page)

He’d bet Holden Castle and his beloved Stoneriggs that Karyn was afraid to fall in love again. She’d done so once, and lost the man she’d loved. Who could blame her if she didn’t want commitment? He himself had avoided it for years after Celine had dumped him.

Why should Karyn be any different?

Loosening his tie and shrugging off his jacket, Rafe headed toward the bungalow. He knew exactly what he was going to do.

A
HALF-MOON
silvered the trees and shrubbery, the lawns like a black carpet; except for a light in the hallway, the bungalow was in darkness. The soft plash of surf was the only sound. Rafe took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of newly mown grass and honeysuckle, laced with the tang of the sea.

What he was about to do would have long-lasting repercussions, he thought soberly. He was more than ready to allow passion back into his life, he’d proved that to himself the last few days. But he wasn’t standing here in the dead of night just because he wanted to make love to Karyn. No, it was far more complex than that.

He wanted more from Karyn, a lot more; and he was willing to give more. To let down his defences and allow her in. To hope that eventually, if he were patient, she’d surmount her grief and do the same for him. Where that would all lead, he had no idea. Trying to ease the tension in his shoulders, he walked up the path toward the front door.

Somewhere inside the bungalow, Karyn screamed.

For a split second Rafe stood like a man transfixed, a chill racing the length of his spine. Then she screamed again, a choked sound wild with terror.

She’d locked her bedroom door. He couldn’t get in that way.

He raced around the corner of the bungalow and in a great surge of relief saw that she’d left her bathroom window open. Leaping over the flowerbed, Rafe punched in
the screen and levered himself over the sill. If someone was hurting her, he’d kill the bastard. Landing on his feet, he crossed the ceramic floor, not caring how much noise he made. The door to her bedroom was closed. He burst in, his fists at the ready.

Karyn was alone in the room. Sprawled facedown on the bed, she was whimpering in her sleep, breathing hard as though she were running. Even as he watched, she flipped over on her back, her eyes tight shut, her face contorted in an agony of fear.

Swiftly Rafe crossed the room and sat down on the bed. “Karyn, wake up—you’re having a bad dream,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and gently shaking her.

Her eyes flew open, stark with terror. “Don’t come near me—go away!” She struck out at Rafe, frantically twisting her body as she tried to pull free.

He said urgently, “It’s Rafe—you’re safe with me, Karyn…I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

He was still clasping her by the shoulders. She went very still in his hold. “Rafe?” she whispered.

He pulled her to his chest. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “You were having a nightmare, that’s all.”

She was trembling now, tiny shudders that lanced him to the heart. Stroking her back with all the tenderness at his command, he said, “Tell me about it, what was happening.”

She burrowed her head into his sweater, her arms fastening around his ribs with desperate strength. She had to tell him; she could feel the words beating at her skull, desperate for release. “It’s always the same dream,” she faltered. “But this time it went further than it ever has. I was so frightened and—hold on to me, Rafe, please don’t let go.”

“I won’t,” he said; and at a deep level knew the words for a vow. Binding and inevitable.

“The dream’s about Steve. It’s always about Steve.”

“About him drowning?”

She shivered. “If only it were that simple…”

“Tell me. It’ll help if you share it with me.”

Would it? Karyn had no way of knowing. But she couldn’t bear to carry this load on her own any longer. “I—I’m running away from Steve, that’s how it always starts,” she gulped. “I’ve left him and I know I have to get away and hide somewhere or he’ll find me. Track me down like a hunted animal. It’s in a city, I don’t know where and it doesn’t matter. I’m running down these dark alleyways…there are men sleeping on the sidewalk, all bundled up in newspapers like so much garbage, and I jump over them and run for the next alley. The whole time I’m terrified out of my wits—I keep hearing footsteps behind me but when I look, there’s no one there. My lungs hurt and I can hardly breathe and I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. Then, finally, I come out into the open and see the river, the water smooth as oil.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. “Steve’s standing there. His clothes are wet, still muddy from the river, and I realize he didn’t drown after all. He has a gun in his hand and he’s pointing it at my heart. Just as he’s squeezing the trigger—that’s when I usually wake up.”

Rafe sat very still, listening with growing horror. A marriage was being revealed to him, a marriage the very opposite of the idyllic love match he’d pictured. He said neutrally, “What was different about the dream tonight?”

“I couldn’t wake up. I was frozen, paralyzed, praying for release. Still holding the gun, he started walking toward me, taking his time, not saying a word because there was nothing he needed to say. We both knew I was powerless
to stop him no matter what he did—that’s when you woke me up.”

“Thank God I did wake you,” Rafe said harshly.

Her arms tightened around him. “I—I don’t understand why you’re here.”

“I went back to the lodge, cooled down and figured you were right—I
was
using a double standard about commitment, one for you and one for me. So I came to tell you so.”

Her brain still flashing with nightmare images, Karyn could scarcely take in what he was saying. “Whatever the reason, thank heavens you came back.”

She was holding him so hard he could scarcely breathe. Her nightgown was made of some slithery material that bared rather more than it covered; to his nostrils drifted the same sensually layered scent he remembered from their first kiss. He still wanted her. That was a given. But when had he last comforted a woman, held her with a tenderness that sought to make her burdens his own? Or listened to an outpouring of terror that had appalled him?

Never, he thought. “Tell me about Steve, Karyn. What he was really like.”

Wasn’t it time for her to break her vow of self-imposed silence? And who better to do that with than Rafe? “How did you get in my room?” she asked, trying to steady her breathing. “I locked the door.”

“Through the screen in the bathroom window. It now has a big hole in it—I’ll have fun explaining that to the staff.”

Her giggle had a slight edge of hysteria. “He-man stuff.”

“I heard you scream,” Rafe said tersely. “I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for you to unlock the bedroom door.”

“What if it’d been a burglar?”

“I’d have flattened him first and asked questions afterward.”

A little kernel of warmth curled around her heart. “I bet you would have…my throat feels kind of weird, I need a drink of water.”

She was no longer trembling. Rafe eased back from her, smiling down at her in the semidarkness. “There are glasses in the kitchen, I’ll only be a minute.”

Karyn nodded, watching as he got up from the bed and left her room: a tall, rangy man with black hair and a body that entranced her. She got up and went into the bathroom, her gaze riveted to the ripped screen. After closing and latching the window, she walked over to the sink. She looked like a ghost, she thought dispassionately, all big eyes and pale cheeks. Turning on the cold tap, she scrubbed at her face, wishing she could as easily scrub away the past.

When she went back to the bedroom, Rafe was sitting on the bed, propped up against the pillows, looking very much at home. She took a long drink from the glass he held out to her and perched a couple of feet away from him on the mattress.

He said easily, looping an arm around her, “Come closer.”

It was so easy to yield to him, to let her head fall to his shoulder, to burrow into it and feel her overstretched nerves relax. For now, she was safe.

Knowing she’d lose courage if she planned what she was about to say, Karyn plunged right in. “I should never have married Steve. We scarcely knew each other—it was a classic case of love at first sight. Only trouble is, no one told me that kind of love can be blind as a bat…well, that’s not strictly true. My mother tried to warn me, and so did Liz. But I ignored them both.”

Rafe’s shirt was smooth under her cheek; the slow rhythm of his breathing was very comforting. “Steve was handsome. He was sexy and charming. Polished, sophisticated and ambitious—he was an accountant with an international firm. So he represented a wider world than the island where I’d grown up and gone to university and gotten my first job. Yet he was in love with me, ordinary Karyn Marshall from Heddingley, Prince Edward Island. I knew I was the luckiest woman in the world. We got a special licence, got married, had a honeymoon in Hawaii and then came home and broke the news.”

She sighed. “Once we were settled, we threw a big party to celebrate our marriage. An old boyfriend—he was there with his wife—asked me to dance. We hadn’t taken ten steps before Steve cut in and whirled me away. I remember thinking at the time how strong Steve was and how much he loved me—so much so, that he wouldn’t want me dancing with anyone else…naive, wasn’t I? You can probably guess the rest. I gradually realized that Steve was enormously possessive and pathologically jealous. I work mostly with men. I visit a lot of farms, where there are more men. And yes, I’d dated at university, why wouldn’t I? He questioned me obsessively, he didn’t want to let me out of his sight in my off-duty hours, and he soon let it be known he didn’t approve of my friendship with Liz.”

“So you had no one to confide in?”

Grateful that Rafe had so quickly understood her isolation, Karyn nodded. “I suppose Steve did love me, in his way. That’s what’s so frightening—how many guises love can take, not all of them pleasant.”

“Did he hurt you? Physically, I mean?” Rafe asked, taking care to keep any emotion out of his voice.

“Very rarely—he didn’t need to.” She frowned. “It was so insidious, Rafe. At first I thought he was joking.
If you

ever dance with Dave again, I’ll break your neck.
But then I realized that it was no joke. He meant it. He was bigger than me, much stronger…and yes, I was afraid of him. Outwardly—to my mother, at the clinic—I kept up this huge front that we were a loving and happily married couple. But all the while I was trying desperately to figure out how to leave him.”

“Living a lie’s one of the hardest things you can do.”

“Just ask me,” she said unhappily. “A foolproof way to leave Steve—that’s all I wanted. I couldn’t just disappear from the face of the earth, and he’d told me if I left him he’d track me down no matter where I went. Was I going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder?”

“You’d have left him,” Rafe said. “Eventually.”

“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.

“There’s no question of your courage.”

“But that’s just it! You know why I still don’t talk about him? Not even to Liz, who’s my best friend. Or to Fiona, my very own sister. It’s because I’m so ashamed. He turned me into someone I scarcely knew. A coward, who jumped if a shadow moved. A woman who kept trying to placate her husband, please him, keep everything smooth on the surface. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. I couldn’t make him happy, no matter what I did, or how much I circumscribed my life and my friendships. My self-esteem plummeted. I despised myself because I didn’t dare tell him to go to hell, because I was too afraid to walk out my own front door and never come back.”

She let out her breath in a long sigh. “Well, you got an earful there.”

“Karyn, you had good reason to be afraid. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I hated the woman I’d become,” she said in a low voice.

She was picking at the fringe on her bedspread, her head downbent. Rafe lifted her chin, looking straight into her eyes. “Your dream is prophetic—you knew all along that Steve was capable of violence. So you were wise to be afraid of him, and sooner or later you’d have figured out a way to get clear of him. I know you would.”

Tears caught on her lashes, she mumbled, “I wish I could believe you.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he repeated forcibly.

She ducked her head still lower. “Yes, I do. I haven’t told you the worst. When the police came to the clinic and told me Steve had drowned in the river, do you know what I felt? Relief. As though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. That’s a terrible epitaph for a marriage.” She gave an unsteady laugh. “And then, of course, he was hailed as a hero in the community, and I had to go along with it. It was true—he did save Donny’s life at the cost of his own. I’ve tried so hard to believe that he redeemed himself at the end.”

Rafe kept to himself his own conclusions: that Steve’s ego had been so immense he couldn’t have conceived he might drown in the river that ran behind his house. “You’ve never told anyone any of this?”

“I couldn’t bear to. It was so tawdry, so unconvincing—sure, he gave me a few bruises every now and then, but otherwise I had no evidence. Outwardly, Steve adored me. People used to tell me how lucky I was to have such a handsome husband who doted on me.” She grimaced. “I sold the house we’d lived in, I sold his car, and I changed my name back to Marshall. The whole village looked at me askance, but there was no way I could explain.”

“Maybe you should try telling Fiona, who loves you. Or your friend Liz. Now that you’ve told me.”

Karyn sat up, turning to face him. “I’m glad I’ve told you, Rafe,” she said slowly. “Thank you for listening.”

She looked heartbreakingly fragile in her pale gown, her skin with the sheen of ivory. He could see the jut of her breasts under the silky fabric, and felt his mouth go dry. But how could he possibly suggest they make love after everything she’d told him? “If you’re okay, I’ll go to my room now.”

“Stay here with me.”

“Karyn, I—”

“I don’t want to be alone, Rafe.”

“All right,” he said slowly, “I’ll stay. I can sleep in the armchair.”

She grabbed him instinctively. “No! Here in bed with me. I need you close.”

A test, Rafe thought wryly. Of restraint, self-control and willpower. Could he lie beside Karyn in the velvet darkness, hold her in his arms and only offer comfort?

Sure he could. If that’s what she needed.