Vengeance to the Max (32 page)

He didn’t register surprise, as far as she could tell. Nor did he try to address her accusations, but answered mildly. “I gather you had a fight with your husband.”

As if he were alive, as if he were made of flesh instead of angel dust—no pun intended—and her own imaginings. “You’ll be happy to know he was leaving me the night he died.”

For a moment, she wished for the light, wished she could see the play of thought on Witt’s face. For now, all she had was his voice, his next words said in even, unreadable tones. “Occurred to me when I read you’d both driven your cars, and he had a bag of clothes in the trunk.”

She could hardly think, hardly breathe. Thank God she was already on the floor. Her legs might not have held her up. Men. Bastards. All of them. “Why didn’t you ask me about it then?”

“Wasn’t my business.”

He couldn’t have known that Max remembered none of it. She’d give him that, but no more.

He shifted to his other leg and went back to the original accusation she’d flung at him. “Why would I be happy he was leaving?” he asked, with careful enunciation and a voice devoid of expression or emotion.

God, she needed to see his face, and God, she was terrified to. “It proves how right you are. I don’t know how to love. I don’t know how to
make
love. I only know how to fuck. I use sex to get what I want as if it’s a club.”

Cameron’s accusation echoed in her head. She wasn’t like Bud. She wasn’t that far gone. But she was pissed as hell at them all, especially Witt. “Isn’t that why you’re always telling me to kiss you or touch you or make love to you?” She mimicked his entreaties with a sneer. “You’re testing me to see if I can do it of my own free will. To see how far you can push.”

He took two steps into the room, his tall form nothing more than a dark blob. “I don’t want anything you don’t give willingly and without hidden motives.”

She slammed her fists down on the floor, irritated the rug muffled the sound. “Well, let me tell you, it ain’t gonna happen. Cameron knew that; that’s why he left. I don’t make love. I use. I fuck. You’ll find out that’s never going to change, no matter what I tell you in the heat of the moment. So why don’t you make it a helluva lot easier on all of us and get out now?”

His voice came dangerously soft, ominously calm. “That what you really want? To be left alone?”

What she really wanted. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. A trace of moisture came to her eyes, her nose, and her throat. A headache was brewing. A doozy. “I’m seeking to end the pain now before it gets worse.”

“For me, it’s as bad as it gets, Max. It’s not gonna hurt any less than it will a week or a month or a year from now. I’m already in love with you.”

She laughed, couldn’t help it as she looked at his dim hulk. He couldn’t know the meaning of love if he believed that. “All I’ve done is give you a rash of shit since the day we met.” She threw up her hands. “So how can you say you love me?”

He reached to the wall and flipped on the overhead light, the glow washing over his face. To make sure she didn’t miss a thing, he squatted in front of her. The blue of his T-shirt and jeans made his eyes blaze like the sky.

“It’s true.”

“Seems sort of like you’re degrading and humiliating yourself.” Cruel words and tone, but she said them anyway.

His eyes narrowed, his lips whitened. She’d hurt him or angered him, but he persevered. “You’re salvageable, Max. I’ll hang on till you see that, too.”

She thought of his cases, how he always cleared them, never gave up. A bulldog on the job. He made her heart ache for what wasn’t going to happen between them.

“What if I never do?”

He held her chin steady. “You will. You’re not a coward.”

She sniffed. Her clenched fingers ached. “I don’t know why you keep believing there’s something good in me. I
am
a coward. I even pick fights with you so that you’ll walk out, and I can blame you for ending the relationship.”

A shadow crossed Witt’s face. His glance passed over the litter of Cameron’s life, scattered across the floor and the rug, flowing out of the box, surrounding her, covering her. “Is that what you tried to get your husband to do?”

The ache revived, stabbing anew at her heart. “He left me. I hate him. He’s a traitor.”

“Liar.” Witt took the words out her dead husband’s mouth, and with the next, took the breath from her chest. “I admire your commitment to him. I envy it. I want the same from you.”

God. She crossed her arms over her stomach. “What if I can’t give you that? Are you going to leave like Cameron?”

“Your husband didn’t leave you. He died.” He pointed a finger at himself. “I don’t intend to let that happen to me for years.”

“No, you’ll walk out the door because I ask you to sit when you take a leak.”

“You’re holding it against me.” He shifted, his knees creaking in the uncomfortable squat. “There’s one reason I’d leave.”

Her body was suddenly weighted to the floor, and she couldn’t have found a pithy answer if it’d been written in chalk in front of her. Some kernel of courage made her ask, “What?”

“If you aborted my child without telling me it existed.”

All the fight drained out of her, and she fell boneless to the side of the bed. His ex-wife had committed that crime against him, against her own child. He’d left her without looking back. Max didn’t realize she’d closed her eyes until Witt’s arms came around her and he pulled her onto his lap. She’d neither seen nor felt him move and couldn’t fathom how Cameron’s shirts and socks had returned to the box now pushed to the center of the room.

Abortion. Her Achilles’ heel. The killing of an innocent. Witt would never understand. She could never tell him what she’d done.

He leaned back against the bed frame, settling her snuggly against him. A frightened voice inside begged her to fight. Exhausted, she stayed where she was.

“I’m sorry your wife lied to you about the baby.”

“Sorry you thought your husband was leaving you.”

“He was.” The words were token resistance.

“He’d have come back.”

She couldn’t see his face. He might have been making it up so she’d feel better. “I don’t think so.”

“He couldn’t have stopped himself.” He stroked the hair at her temple. “Like me.”

“You sound like a lovesick puppy,” she murmured, all squishy inside. He was getting to her. How the hell had he done that?

His arms tightened. “I’m not ashamed of loving you, Max. Thing is, you gotta realize you love me back for it to work out.”

Ah, so there were two reasons he’d leave her. She traced a small circle on his T-shirt right over his heart. He smelled of fresh laundry that had been hanging in the sun. She wondered if he knew how ridiculously straightforward his answer was. Of course. He was a master of understatement.

Loving him back was a small part of the problem, a moment of realization she’d passed days ago, if she were totally honest. There was so much more. All the things Cameron had run from. It wasn’t needing to be on top or the switch of terminology from
having sex
to
making love
. It was about the shame that attacked in the aftermath of sex with Cameron. It was about the terror she had of bearing his children, regardless of whether she could. It was about the constant belief that one day her husband would up and walk away because he couldn’t take any more of her shit.

As Cameron had. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I can’t blame him for leaving. I’m not normal. I tried with Cameron, I really did. I wasn’t the white-picket-fence-and-babies kind of girl. He left me that night, and if he hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have come back.”

“He
did
come back.”

“Stop humoring me. You think I’m crazy as a loon and that Cameron’s ghost is a figment of my imagination.”

“I don’t.” Fingers on her chin, he made her look at him. “Not for a long time. He’s real. He’s leading us to his killer.” He stroked her jaw. “Cameron would never have left you if he didn’t have to.” It was the first time Witt had used Cameron’s name. “He didn’t stay to find you a man. He stayed to watch you overcome the shit life’s dealt you. Like me, he knows you
will
.”

“Ladybird and Horace have been talking to you.” She managed a facetious tone. Inside, she was about to burst.

He shook her shoulders. “Wake up, Max. You’re the one who thinks you’re weak. The rest of us know you’re tough as nails.”

Wonder of wonders. He believed in her. God, he really did. She thought about telling him all her secrets, about being so angry she’d wished Cameron dead that night, about the baby she’d killed, about the uncle who’d gotten her pregnant, about the years of wandering from man to man searching for something she finally found with Cameron only to lose it such a short time later. She could have felt sorry for herself, she could have sunk deeper into the hole she’d been digging for the last twenty years or so, and while she couldn’t blame Cameron for getting sick and tired of it all, she decided here and now she wouldn’t blame herself either.

Somewhere nearby, Cameron sighed.

She wasn’t like Bud. She wouldn’t sleep with Witt for his gun. For this night, she’d forget about vengeance and betrayal. She’d forget about Bud and her plan. Instead, she would learn to make love. Not merely how to use the words, but to feel them melt the block of ice that had surrounded her heart and enslaved her soul.

Max put her arms around Witt’s neck, her face to his shoulder, and whispered, “I love you.”

“See how much I believe in you? I’m not even gonna ask if you really mean it.”

Funny. For her, he had to enumerate reasons for loving her. She only had to say the words, and he accepted.

“Remember that the next time I get mad and take it back,” she warned.

His eyes turned darkly serious. “Don’t ever take it back. Say whatever bitchy things come to mind, which, by the way, you’re damn good at doing, but don’t ever take those words back.”

She wanted to close her eyes against the flash of his soul in his gaze, but he thought she was brave. For him, she would be. “I promise I won’t take them back.” She said the words again, her hand to his thumping heart. “I love you.” She kissed his throat. “I’ll probably say I hate you or something, but that’s not saying I don’t love you, okay?”

He nuzzled her nose. “You’re a very complicated woman.”

“Are you going to spend the night? The whole night?” She gulped down her fear. “You can share my bathroom in the morning.”

Witt looked at her single bed, down at his long legs, then widened his eyes. “Bed’s too small for sleeping.”

Max waited a heartbeat, snuggled closer, drew her head back to meet his gaze. “I don’t want to sleep.” Even if she was dog-tired.

“I don’t wanna simply have sex.”

Well, sitting in his lap, she felt
something
rise beneath her, but, “Sex isn’t what I had in mind.”

His lips thinned. “I won’t accept crumbs just because I’m love with you.”

Crumbs? She’d said he could share her bathroom. “I’m not offering crumbs.” She flattened her hands on his chest, then slid sideways so that she was on her knees beside him. “I’m not
offering
anything. I’m asking if you’ll make love with me.”

He watched her with those implacable blue eyes.

“Trust me.” God, that was a first, Max Starr asking for trust.

He regarded her for a long moment. A thousand emotions flashed across his face, so fast she couldn’t define them. “Come home with me,” he said. “Sleep in my bed.” His eyelids dropped to half mast. “We’ll see what comes up.”

“Are you playing hard to get?”

His hand fell to his lap. He crossed his legs at the ankle. “Waiting for you to change your mind.” He smiled, real slow and ever so sexy. “Bet you can’t make it all the way home before you jump me.”

“Bet I can.” Bet he was hoping she wouldn’t.

He crossed his arms, cocked his head. “What’s the loser get?”

This time it was her turn to smile, real slow and real sexy. She hoped. “A blowjob.”