Karen Rose - Silent Scream

“You didn’t.” The memory hit her hard and she jerked her face away from him. Stop this now. “Why?” she asked roughly. “Why didn’t you call? If you remember all of it, why have you stayed away all this time?”

His hips stilled. “I woke the next morning with a hell of a hangover. Alone. The last clear memory I had was the reception, drinking champagne. Dancing with you. Then I woke up in my bed.” He swallowed. “Naked. I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten home. What was reality and what I’d fantasized. Then I smelled you on my pillow.” He turned his face into her hair. “I knew you’d been there. You’d gone without a good-bye or a note.”

He lifted her head and she opened her eyes. His gaze was intense. She saw confusion swirling there, and hurt. And something else she couldn’t define.

“Why did you leave?” he asked urgently. “I need to know.”

“Let me down.” Instantly he did. Her knees were weak, but her feet were solidly on the floor, where I should have kept them all along. She wanted to look away, but forced her eyes to remain on his face. “When I… when I came,” she said, “what did I say?”

He frowned slightly. “My name. Why?” His frown deepened, his eyes narrowing when she said no more. “Why? What did I say?”

She drew a breath. She’d never done a one-night stand in her life before David Hunter, not that he’d believe it. And rarely had she done that, even with men she’d known for years, but… God. She’d been caught up in some kind of evil genie spell, because not to take him into her mouth had never entered her mind. His body had bucked and bowed and he’d been so goddamn… beautiful. Then he’d thrown his head back, clenched his teeth and… said the word that had said it all.

She realized her own teeth were clenched. “Dana,” she said tautly. My sister’s best friend. Who was married to someone else.

His gray eyes abruptly shuttered, becoming unreadable. “And?”

Olivia’s mouth fell open. “And? That’s all you have to say?”

He shook his head hard. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

And? Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. “Let me go.”

“Olivia, wait.”

She shoved at his shoulders. “No. Let. Me. Go.” She twisted, her dress falling back down around her legs. He reached for her and she smacked him away.

“Olivia, wait.”

A sob was building but she’d be goddamned before she let him see her cry. She made it out of the room, grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter, him on her heels. He made it to the door ahead of her and slapped his palm against it.

“Listen to me.”

“I did,” she spat. “That’s the problem. Let me go or I swear to God you’ll be sorry.”

Slowly he backed away. “I am. I am sorry.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed and yanked the door open. She stopped herself, forcing herself to calm down. Driving when she was this angry was dangerous. She stared straight ahead, not trusting herself to look at him again. “I don’t do one-night stands, David. Believe it, or don’t. I don’t care. But hear this clearly. I don’t play second-string. When I’m with a man, I want him to be thinking of me. Only me.”

“Olivia, please. I… don’t have any excuse except I’d had too much to drink.”

“And?” she asked sardonically. “From now on, stop watching me. Please.”

“All right,” he said hollowly. “I won’t bother you again.”

“Good.” She got to her car and out to the main road, then the shakes hit and she pulled over. This always happened when she got emotional. That’s why she didn’t like to get emotional. She groped for her cell phone in her purse and hit speed-dial one.

“Well?” Paige asked, bypassing greeting.

“Sal’s Bar,” Olivia said darkly. “In thirty.”

“Then… it didn’t go well?”

“Y’think? I’m gonna text Brie, see if she can meet us.”

Paige sighed. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, sure. I’m just peachy. See you in thirty minutes.”

David stood in the doorway of Glenn’s cabin, knuckles pressing into his throbbing temples. And? And? His stomach was churning. He’d blown it again. And he’d hurt her. Again. “You stupid, dumb fuck.”

But standing here wouldn’t help anything. Shoulders heavy, he closed the front door and started to clear the unused table when his cell phone rang. It was Paige.

Of course it was. “What?” he asked wearily.

“You know, for a gorgeous guy with a really sharp brain, you are a stupid SOB.”

He closed his eyes, too tired to fight. “Thank you, Paige. See you tomorrow night at the dojo. You can rip me a new one then.”

“I’m on my way to Sal’s to meet her and Brie for major mojitos. What did you do?”

“This is none of your business. Really.”

“I’m going to have to tell her you know us both. I’ve never lied to her. I won’t start.”

Terrific. “Go ahead. Not much you can tell her that’ll make it much worse.”

“That bad?”

“Oh yeah.” I don’t play second-string, she’d said. “Paige, who hurt her?”

“You mean, besides you?”

He flinched. “You know, you’re not helping here.”

“I’m sorry. I just hate to see her this upset and I’m going to have to make it worse by saying you and I are friends.”

“Well, at least we’re still friends,” he said morosely.

“God. David, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to twist the knife. You want to know who hurt her? Most recently, it was her ex-fiancé.”

David’s eyes narrowed. “Micah Barlow?”

“You know Micah? Oh, wait, he’s in Arson now, so you would. Well, yeah, Micah was in it, but he wasn’t her fiancé. That would have been Micah’s best friend, Doug.”

Second-string. “He left her for someone else, didn’t he?”

There was a pause. “Yeah. And it almost killed her.”

Good going, Hunter. “Just do what you need to do to make her okay. Say what you need to say. Call me anything you want. I won’t bother her anymore.”

“David… Dammit.”

“Tomorrow at the dojo, just let me know that she’s all right.”

“We’ll think of something. Just hang in there.”

I hung on too long. That was the problem. But how could he fix it?

Monday, September 20, 11:15 p.m.

“It’s easier when the stuff is already here,” Albert muttered. Like Eric, he carried a gas can in each hand. Mary quietly brought up the rear, carrying the spool of fuse line. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and swollen.

I should be grieving, Eric thought. Joel was my friend. But all he could think of was getting this job done and getting the hell out of Dodge.

“Last time we got lucky,” Eric hissed back. “The glue was there. I told you, the fork trucks here run on propane and the tank is out back. We can’t use it to light the fire.”

Dressed all in black, each of them wore gloves and this time, ski masks over their faces. They stepped over the dog, who’d finally gone to sleep after eating the steak they’d injected with a narcotic Mary had left over from a back injury. She looked back.

“He’s breathing,” she said. “Good. I don’t want anyone else hurt.”

“He’s a dog, not an ‘anyone,’” Eric muttered, putting his gas cans down next to the back door. Not a girl. Whose face he could still see every time he closed his eyes.

“Let’s dump the gas outside,” Albert urged. “Don’t risk triggering the alarm.”

“We have to destroy what’s inside.” Eric sliced a hole in the door’s window and broke away enough glass so that he could crawl through. “Plus the video from the security cameras is inside. We need to take that with us. Give me a boost.”

Grumbling, Albert did so and prepared to come through himself.