Worth Dying For (18 page)

“I don’t know who loved that tree house more, me or
Granddaddy,” Leslie Anne had told Lucie. “Eustacia used to pack us picnic lunches and we’d climb the ladder and sit up there eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking chocolate milk out of Thermoses.”

“Sounds like you had a wonderful childhood.”

“Yes, I did. Thanks to Mother and Granddaddy.”

“Do you ever use the tree house now that you’re older?”

“How’d you guess?” Leslie Anne giggled. “Every once in a while I climb up there and stay for hours whenever I want to be by myself.”

After they finished cooling down Passion Flower and Mr. Wonderful, Luther led one horse and then the other into their stalls. “You’d best be heading back to the house,” he said. “It’ll be dark before long and Miss Sharon will be hunting y’all up for supper.”

“You sound like a mother hen,” Leslie Anne said jokingly. “Has my running away got even you worrying about me?”

Luther grinned. “I just know you ought not worry folks who love you.”

“I agree, Luther.” Leslie Anne patted him on the arm, then turned to Lucie. “Race you back to the house?”

“You honestly think you can outrun me?” Lucie asked.

“Let’s find out.”

“I never could resist a dare. Okay. Want me to give you a head start?”

“No way,” Leslie Anne said. “I’m going to beat you fair and square.”

Luther stayed out of the way as Leslie Anne and Lucie simultaneously counted down from three. Like a couple of whirlwinds, they ran out of the stables and up the path leading to the old mansion. Leslie Anne managed to keep pace with Lucie until nearly halfway to the
house, then Lucie sprinted ahead, leaving Leslie Anne struggling to catch up.

“Leslie Anne?” a voice called from the woods.

You’re imagining it
, she told herself and kept running.

“Leslie Anne.”

Don’t listen. There’s no one there
.

Although she increased her pace, hoping to catch up with Lucie, Leslie Anne’s gaze darted left and right, searching for the source of a voice she kept hoping wasn’t real. And all the while, she waited to hear those three taunting words.

Who’s your daddy?

W
INDED AND PERSPIRING
, Lucie reached the back porch of the old mansion. Stretching to relieve the tension in her body, she waited for Leslie Anne. After a couple of minutes, Lucie began to feel uneasy. Leslie Anne hadn’t been that far behind her. Where the hell was she? After another couple of minutes passed, real fear tightened Lucie’s stomach muscles.

As she ran back down the path, retracing her steps, she called out Leslie Anne’s name and prayed nothing had happened to the girl who’d been left in her care.

W
HEN THEY RETURNED
to the motel where they’d stayed the night before, Dante stopped at the door to Tessa’s room, but as he started to unlock the door, she grasped his wrist.

“Come in and stay with me for a while,” she said.

He looked into her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes the same color as Amy’s, and all he wanted to do was grab her and hold on to her forever. But Tessa wasn’t Amy, no matter how much she reminded him of her, no matter how much some heartbroken part of him wished she was. “I’m not fit company for anyone.”

“I’m not looking for good company,” she told him. “I just don’t want to be alone, and I don’t think you do, either.”

He lifted his arm and skimmed her cheek with the back of his hand. “You shouldn’t do this. And if you do, you’ll regret it. It’s not your responsibility to hold me together. And I’m warning you that I’m this close—” he indicated a quarter of an inch with his index finger and thumb “—to falling to pieces.”

Admitting that he was on the verge of breaking down wasn’t easy for him, but the last thing he wanted was for Tessa to see him fall apart. He was hurting more than he ever had, even more than the night Amy first disappeared. He’d been desperate then, but he’d kept hope alive for
weeks and months afterward, always so sure he’d eventually find her alive.

And even later on, when he’d learned about Eddie Jay Nealy’s killing spree and how Amy fit the profile for Nealy’s victims, he had tried to convince himself that she hadn’t been one of them. Even though eventually he had come to believe Amy was dead, that in all likelihood Nealy had killed her, a small kernel of hope had remained, buried deep in his heart.

Today, while he’d knelt in front of a pink marble headstone, that last fragment of hope had finally died.

Tessa grasped his hand. He curled his fingers over hers and held tightly. She dragged his hand slowly to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. He trembled inside. All his anguish suddenly combined with a purely human hunger for solace.

“You shouldn’t be alone,” she told him, still gazing into his eyes.

“I know you’re a strong woman, Tessa, and God knows I need you, but—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Come inside, sit down and talk to me. Tell me about Amy. About how you met and fell in love.”

A knot formed in his throat, threatening to choke him. Deep down inside, he was crying; and those tears were struggling for release. He wanted to refuse Tessa’s offer, to tell her that there was no way in hell he was going to bare his soul to her. He couldn’t talk about Amy, couldn’t tell Tessa what it was like to love someone more than life itself. He’d never told anyone how deeply he mourned Amy, that with every breath he took he remembered her and missed her. The sweetness of her smile. The sound of
her laughter. The smell of her neck when he’d nuzzled her playfully. The way she’d curled against him after they made love. Her voice whispering his name.

God, how many times had he heard her calling his name, pleading with him to find her, begging him to never stop loving her?

I still love you, Amy. I still love you.

“I can’t,” Dante told Tessa. “You don’t want—”

Tessa took the key from him and unlocked her door, then reached out and clasped his hand. He looked at her and shook his head. Ignoring him, she tugged on his hand, urging him to enter her room. As if in a trance, he followed her and allowed her to lead him to the nearest of the two double beds. She grasped his shoulders and pushed him down on the edge of the bed, then sat beside him.

Tessa shrugged off her coat and tossed it into the nearby chair, then she undid Dante’s black leather jacket, eased it off him and whirled it through the air to land atop her coat.

He sat there, hurting, wanting to turn back the clock and change the past. But he could change nothing. He would never see Amy again, never hold her, kiss her, make love to her. He had lost her all over again. And this time it was forever.

For the past seventeen years, he’d been going through the motions, pretending he was alive, telling himself that if he could get through just one more day, everything would be all right. But he’d been kidding himself. Every morning he woke to a world without Amy.

Tessa took his hand, her touch gentle and loving. He could feel her warmth, could sense her sincere concern. He turned to her and for a millisecond, he didn’t see Tessa Westbrook, a woman of thirty-five. He saw seventeen-year-old Amy Smith, her expression filled with love. Love for him.

“Amy?”

God, what had he been thinking? What had he said?

“I’m sorry, I—” He cupped her face between his hands.

Tears gathered in her eyes. “It’s all right, Dante. It’s all right.”

“God, Tessa, don’t let me hurt you. Don’t let me—”

“Please, please…let me help you. Tell me about your Amy. You’ve probably never talked to anyone about her, have you?”

Tears cascaded down Tessa’s cheeks and fell on Dante’s hands where they cradled her face.

“Don’t cry, honey,” Dante said. “It breaks my heart to see you crying for me.”

“Then cry for yourself. Cry for you and Amy. Cry for what you can never have, for the life that can never be, for the love that’s lost to you forever.”

Her words cut into him like a razor-sharp blade, bringing his heart’s blood to the surface, baring his soul for her to see. Only partially realizing what he was doing, he flung her away from him and shot up off the bed.

He made it halfway to the door before he heard her call to him. “You have to stop running sometime and it might as well be now. Amy’s dead. She’s been dead for seventeen years. But you’re alive, Dante.” He felt her presence even before she touched him on the back. “You are alive. Don’t you know that Amy would want you to live, to love, to have a full and happy life? You owe it to her, to the love the two of you shared, not to crawl into that grave with her.”

Dante whirled around, agony and rage white-hot within him. “Damn you!” he screamed at Tessa, then grabbed her and shook her. Shook her hard.

She wept uncontrollably, then when he released her, his
breath ragged and hard, she came back to him, put her arms around him and said, “Cry for Amy. Cry for her and say goodbye.”

He felt as if his heart was being ripped from his chest, as if he were dying by slow, torturous degrees. And then the first teardrop fell. Tessa stood on tiptoe and kissed the tear from his cheek.

“She’ll always be a part of you and you can always love her,” Tessa said, “but you have to let her go. You have to say goodbye.”

A dam burst inside Dante. And seventeen years of grief and sorrow and guilt poured out of him. He wept as he’d never wept in his life, tears blinding him, the pain unbearable. Tessa held him as he trembled and cried. She kissed his cheek, his jaw, his neck and cooed to him. Comforting, loving sounds. He clung to her, holding on, trusting her, instinctively knowing that she and she alone could bring him through this soul-wrenching absolution and long overdue acceptance. Hopefully, with his sanity still intact.

“G
OOD GRIEF
, you scared the bejesus out of me.” Leslie Anne swatted Charlie on the arm when he appeared out of nowhere. “Were you calling my name a couple of minutes ago?”

“Yes, I saw you and that Evans woman running and thought maybe something was wrong, so I called out to you.”

“Oh, thank God it was you.” Leslie Anne sighed with relief.

Charlie grasped her shoulders and squeezed gently. “How are you, dear girl? It’s been a rough few days, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s been bad, but everything’s going to work out.”

“I love your spunk, you know. You remind me of your mama, the way she used to be before her accident.”

Charlie sounded odd, as if something was bothering him. But maybe it was nothing more than the usual. Whenever he talked about how things had been with her mother and him before “the accident,” he always got this funny look in his eyes and a catch in his voice. Poor old Charlie. He’d probably always be in love with her mother, even if he did eventually wind up marrying Celia someday.

“Are you all right?” Leslie Anne asked. “You seem kind of…I don’t know, sad or something.” She patted Charlie’s left hand that still clasped her shoulder.

“I’m just worried sick about you.” Charlie leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I sure am proud of the way you’re handling things. You’re a brave girl to not let this awful mess with the mystery caller telephoning your aunt Myrle and Olivia and God knows who else upset you. But you have to know it’s all lies, that whoever is spreading the rumor that Tessa was raped by that serial killer, Eddie Jay Nealy, seventeen years ago, is out to hurt your family.”

“Someone called Aunt Myrle…and Olivia? They…they told them that—” Leslie Anne felt as if she’d been hit in the belly by a hard fist and all the air had been knocked out of her.

“Oh, God, Leslie Anne, I thought you knew.” Charlie’s eyes widened in horror, his face went deathly pale. “I assumed they’d told you by now, to prepare you for when your friends start calling and…” He dropped his hands in front of him and wrung them together nervously. “I could cut out my tongue for telling you.”

Feeling dazed and uncertain, Leslie Anne stared at Charlie for several seconds before the full impact of what he’d said hit her. The terrible secret her grandfather and
mother had kept hidden from the world was no longer a secret. Someone had told Aunt Myrle and Olivia Sizemore.

It has to be the same person who sent me the newspaper clippings and that terrible note telling me that I was Eddie Jay Nealy’s daughter!

“Oh, God, Charlie, this can’t be happening.” Tears filled her eyes and a hot, tingling sensation spread through her body.

“I know it’s a lie, but lies can hurt,” Charlie said. “We’ll make sure everyone knows that there isn’t a word of truth to it. We can’t have people thinking—”

“But it is true,” Leslie Anne said.

“What?” Charlie shook his head. “No. No, it can’t be true.”

“I didn’t want to believe it, either, but…Mother and Granddaddy admitted to me that it’s the truth. Oh, Charlie, I am that terrible man’s child.”

Leslie Anne threw herself at Charlie, who opened his arms to encompass her. She laid her head on his chest and wept while he patted her comfortingly on the back. She wished he’d say something so she would know he didn’t hate her. She couldn’t bear it if Charlie hated her.

Lifting her head and blinking the tears away, she looked up at him, but he was staring off into the distance. “Charlie?”

“Hmm?”

“Look at me.”

He did.

“I’m still the same person I was before, aren’t I? I mean, it doesn’t make any difference that I’m—”

“No, of course it doesn’t make any difference.” Charlie reached down, grasped her shoulders again and pushed her at arm’s length. “To those of us who love you, it
won’t matter, but to others, it might. You know how people can be.”

“You think all my friends will hate me, don’t you? And their parents won’t let them have anything to do with me.”

“You mustn’t fret. Perhaps it’s not too late to keep this under wraps. We can’t be certain anyone other than Myrle and Olivia received a phone call.”

“Leslie Anne! Leslie Anne!” Lucie’s voice rang out loud and clear in the stillness of twilight.

“I’m here,” Leslie Anne called. “Over here with Charlie.”

Lucie came flying up the path and halted abruptly when she saw Charlie with his hands on Leslie Anne’s shoulders. “Are you all right?” Lucie’s right hand eased inside her jacket. Leslie Anne knew the Dundee agent was preparing to pull her gun if necessary. Earlier today, she’d seen the holster Lucie wore strapped to her left shoulder.

“No, I’m not all right.” Leslie Anne pulled away from Charlie. “But you don’t have to shoot the messenger.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucie asked, a puzzled frown on her face.

“I’m afraid I did the unforgivable,” Charlie said. “I’ve been so concerned about Leslie Anne since I heard the news that I rushed right over. And when Eustacia told me you two had gone riding, I couldn’t wait to see if Leslie Anne was all right, so I came looking for her. I thought surely someone had already told her about the phone calls Myrle and Olivia—”

“You told her about those phone calls?” Lucie glared at Charlie. Her hand dropped away from her shoulder holster hidden beneath her jacket.

“I feel dreadful about it.” Charlie hung his head. “Simply dreadful.”

“It’s not your fault, Charlie.” Leslie Anne zeroed in on Lucie. “Why wasn’t I told? You knew, of course. Did Granddaddy decide I wasn’t to be told? Or—”

“Let’s go back to the house and you can talk to your grandfather,” Lucie said. “And don’t judge him too harshly. He’s simply trying to protect you.”

“I’m getting awfully tired of hearing that excuse every time somebody lies to me or doesn’t tell me what’s going on. I’m not a child, you know.”

“Yes, you are a child,” Lucie said. “And you’re acting like one right now. If you want to be treated like an adult, then when we go back to the house and you speak with your grandfather, act like an adult and there’s a good chance he’ll treat you like one.”

D
ANTE LAY
on the bed beside her, his head resting on her breast, his arm draped over her waist. She had led him to the bed and held him while he cried, soothing him only with her touch. Words were superficial and inadequate at a time such as this. And time had no meaning. Tomorrow and yesterday blended into one, becoming only today, this hour, this moment. As she stroked his thick, black hair, she wondered if perhaps he’d fallen asleep. He was so quiet, so still.

“Tessa?”

Startled by the sound of his voice, a deep, soft murmur, she shivered. “Yes?”

“When I first met Amy, I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

“Was it love at first sight for both of you?” Tessa asked, relief washing over her. Dante being able to talk about Amy was a good sign. A very good sign.

Dante sighed. “Nah, not for either of us. But it sure was lust at first sight for me. Man, did I want her.”

“What about her?”