Ha. As if that was going to happen. But she could try. At least till morning, when she’d have to face him all over again.
She used some plastic and tape to seal up the broken window, ignoring Cole. Finished, she headed for the stairs, put her hand on the balustrade.
“Bryn.”
She froze for a brief beat. Tension bristled behind her. She could almost feel his eyes on her back, pulling her, making her turn.
His grim visage made her wish she’d kept right on going up the stairs. Damn him for making her feel like the bad guy in this situation. She couldn’t stop him from looking for this truth of his, whether he was right about the past or not.
And how could he be right? Why would anyone else have killed Aimee? Nothing about his claims made sense. Wade Dempsey had been the one with the grudge against the Louvels. The one making threats. The one who’d charged back to Bellefleur drunk, looking for revenge. The one who’d been found with Aimee.
How dare Cole expect her to help him now? She wanted to charge right back down the stairs, shake him, strike him, do something, anything.
Then he did something. He closed the space between them in two heartbeats.
“We weren’t finished with our conversation,” he said quietly. The bright candescence of the chandelier played unforgivingly on his features. God, he was good-looking. Always had been. But now his face was etched with experience, and yet within those austere lines she could still see the boy she’d loved.
His tormented bayou eyes had her aching with a raw need. They’d both given in to that need once and had found something in each other that had seemed too strong to break. But the horror their families had faced had broken it. She’d stood by her family and he’d stood by his. Their youthful trust and love had been shattered irreparably. They’d tried to talk, but they’d both been too hurt and too immature to overcome what stood between them, and eventually it had turned into a bitter chasm. And she wasn’t feeling any more capable of overcoming it now. So why did she suddenly wish things could be different?
“Maybe you weren’t.” She forced her weak knees to move. “But I am.”
She left him at the foot of the stairs, but her room was no escape. The pull of him reached her even there. She clicked the lock on the inside of her doorknob and sank onto the night-gloam of her bed.
Sleep was a million miles away, but somehow she found her way into its dark, anguished arms. And the nightmares of Aimee’s murder pounded through the wispy night of ghosts and fears.
It was sometime after midnight when a shadow lunged through her bedroom window.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.