Sandra Marton - Cole Cameron's Revenge

“Take it easy or you’ll black out again.”

“Black out?”

Her voice was small and shaky. Another minute, she’d have him feeling sorry for her.

“Yeah.” He took the glass from the table and handed it to her. “Black out, as in faint. Here. Drink this.”

“What is it?” she said, giving the liquid a wary look.

“Water.” Another quick smile that wasn’t quite a smile curved his mouth. “Arsenic’s too easy to trace.”

Anger flickered across her face like heat lightning and disappeared as quickly. She took the glass and drank half of the contents.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly.

“Don’t thank me, thank Sam’s secretary.” Cole folded his arms. “Do you want a doctor?”

Faith shook her head. A mistake, she knew, as soon as she did it. The room whirled but she sat up anyway, swung her feet to the floor and put the glass on the table.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“There’s a damp towel, too, if you want it.”

“I said, I’m fine.”

She wasn’t. And she didn’t want a damp towel, she wanted to get on her feet. Cole would still tower over her but at least that would take away some of his advantage. She just didn’t know if she could manage that without falling down again—and yet, why was she so surprised to see him? Her husband was dead. Cole hadn’t bothered returning for the funeral but this was different. This was all about the disposition of the Cameron estate.

A sense of unease inched the length of her spine. Would he fight her for the money? Ted had been convinced Cole wouldn’t want it. She didn’t want it, either. She’d told Ted that but he’d said that money belonged to Peter. To her son. Her son, and Cole’s…

Cole’s son.

Oh, God.

She’d stopped thinking of Peter that way years ago, but here was a walking, talking reminder of the truth. She saw a copy of her son’s eyes in Cole’s face, the same hair falling over Cole’s forehead. Her son was only a little boy but already, he held his head the way Cole did. And there was the same tiny indentation in his chin, that same fullness to his mouth…

“Put your head down.”

“I’m—I’m fine.”

“The hell you are,” Cole said sharply. “Put your head down and take a couple of deep breaths.”

Gradually, the room stopped spinning. She lifted her head slowly. Cole was squatting in front of her, his hands cupping her shoulders.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She pulled back. “What are you doing here, Cole?”

Slowly, he rose to his feet. “Making women swoon at the sight of me,” he said, with a cool smile.

“It’s the heat.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you wear black on a hot day. Or am I supposed to think you’re in mourning for my brother?” His mouth thinned. “The way I hear it, you wore pink to his funeral.”

“What would you know about it? You didn’t even bother coming home.”

“I didn’t know Ted was—that there’d been an accident until weeks after it happened.”

“No, of course not.”

“It’s the truth, dammit! I was in the field and…”

And Jergen’s message had to find him, first, but why tell that to Faith? He didn’t owe her anything but what she deserved.

“…and whatever scheme you were up to then was more important.” Faith stood up. The floor tilted slightly and she gave herself time to recover by smoothing down her skirt. “Not that it matters now.”

“Oh, it matters.” Cole folded his arms over his chest. “After all, today’s payoff time.”

“Payoff time?”

“Sure. Finding out how much the Cameron estate is worth.” His smile was all teeth. “Big doings, huh, baby?”

“And that’s the reason you showed up, isn’t it? To stake your claim?”

“Yes. Exactly. I’m here to claim what’s mine.” He let his eyes move over her with slow insolence. “You might want to button your jacket before we meet with Sam Jergen.”

She looked down at herself, then at him. He saw the soft rush of pink rise to her cheeks and he gave her a slow, knowing smile.

“I opened it after you passed out. You were warm. Warm, and wet.” Deliberately, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “That’s what you were always best at, baby. Being warm and wet for me.”

She bunched her hands into fists and he knew she wanted to hit him but she wasn’t a fool. This was her big moment. Faith wasn’t going to show what she was all about this morning. He saw her fingers shake as she closed the buttons but when she spoke, she sounded calm.

“It’s difficult to believe you and Ted were brothers. He was a gentleman.”

“That’s why you were able to fool him into marrying you.”

The cool facade dented. “I didn’t fool him into anything.”

“Sure you did.” Cole caught her wrist as she started past him. “I’d never have fallen for that trick.”

“Let go of me, please.”

“It’s the oldest game in the world.”

“Let go, Cole.”

“Telling a man he’s made you pregnant—”

Faith swung toward him. “That’s not the way it was!”

“—and after he’s done the right thing, married you and given you his name, you bat your eyes and say, whoops, sorry, I made a minor miscalculation—”

“What?”

“But Ted was a good guy. He was too decent to say, okay, the joke’s over and I want a divorce.”

She stared at Cole in amazement. Yes, she’d made Ted promise not to tell Cole about her child but was it possible he still didn’t know?

“‘Pregnant? Let me see a lab test,’ another guy would have said, but not Ted. How’d you work it, Faith? It couldn’t have been easy, first luring him into bed, then making him think you were having his baby—”

“Damn you! You know it all, don’t you?” Her voice trembled with rage; her eyes glittered with it. “But that’s not the way it was. I didn’t…” Faith stopped herself in midsentence. Why tell him more than she had to? “He said—he wanted to marry me.”

Cole’s hand tightened on her wrist. “What’d you think, huh? That maybe my old man would change his mind about a slut like you if he thought Ted was going to give him a grandson?”

“Let go of me!”

“You can’t run away, Faith. Not yet.” Cole grinned. “It’s payoff time, remember? The will. Don’t you want to know what you’re getting?”

She wrenched her hand free and this time he let her. “I hate to disappoint you,” she said softly, “but I already know. Ted told me.”

“Did he,” he said, but she knew it wasn’t a question.

“I never wanted the Cameron money.”

“Of course not.” Cole’s eyes narrowed. “Money wasn’t why you married my brother.”

I married your brother because I was pregnant with your child. The words were on the tip of her tongue but Cole would never know that. He never had to know she had a child at all. All she had to do was get through the next hour. He’d leave Liberty and she’d never have to see him again.

“Believe what you like,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me. Nothing about you matters to me. I came here to see Sam Jergen, not to be insulted.”

Cole could feel his anger growing. She was playing at being a lady. She looked the part, even sounded it, but he knew exactly what she was.

“Damn you,” he growled, grabbing her shoulders and pushing her back against the wall. “The worst part of this is trying to figure out how the hell Ted and I could have been such fools.”

“Take your hands off me!”

“There was a time you wanted my hands all over you.”

“Stop it.”

“What’s the problem, baby? Don’t you like being reminded of how things used to be?”

“You—you bastard!”