The Reunited

EIGHT





"YOU going to talk to me?”

It was hours later.

Jillian had fallen asleep, and Taige had stayed by her side until she knew the girl was sleeping.

Even now, she was having a hard time not going into the teen’s room to check on her. Should have stayed in there, she thought sourly as Cullen cut her off just outside their daughter’s room.

Chicken. Damn straight.

Sometimes it wasn’t always a bad thing to back away from an ugly fight. Especially when she knew she might say things that would leave bruises. Or when she’d hear things that would bruise her.

But he wouldn’t leave it be, so fine.

They’d have their fight.

Carefully, she closed the door, reaching out once more with her mind to check on Jillian. The girl was asleep, sound asleep, probably for the first time in months. A lash of guilt hit Taige, full across the heart. It wasn’t unusual for Jillian to have problems sleeping. Between her gifts and her nightmares, she’d have spells when the restlessness got bad, when she’d sleep for only a few hours. So they’d take her to her therapist, do whatever they could to help get her through whatever was bothering her.

And they’d done that.

But it hadn’t been enough because Taige hadn’t seen just how much worse it was this time. Over the past few years, Jilly’s gift had grown so much and her shielding . . . hell. She left Taige in the dirt and she’d been hiding so much of this. What Taige didn’t understand was why she’d been hiding. Although considering how Cullen had reacted to today’s events? Yeah. Maybe she did understand why.

Worry about this later, she told herself as she made her way into the sitting room. It was on the far side of the suite, and hopefully they could be quiet enough to keep from waking the girl.

Taige layered her shields down tight, knowing that was the only way to keep from leaking over on the girl. Cullen wasn’t an issue. She could pick up odd and random thoughts, but she almost always had to be touching him and looking for those thoughts. It wasn’t much different with Jillian. He was practically a psychic null.

Made it easier to have it out with him—that was for certain.

Flinging herself into a chair, she crossed her legs and stared up at him. Anger and frustration chewed a hole inside her. Underneath all of that there was hurt. He actually thought she’d do anything that would let Jilly get hurt.

“So, get it out,” she drawled, smiling at him.

“Get what out?” Cullen crossed his arms over his chest, staring at her like he wasn’t exactly sure which way to go from here.

“You want to lay into me over what’s going on, I’m sure. Have at it.” She pretended to study her nails. A few days ago, she’d decided to have a “girl’s day” with Jillian, hoping to cheer the kid up. She’d been bored out of her mind, and Jillian had figured that out about halfway through the manicure, but they’d finished up. Then they’d gone to the beach instead of getting a pedicure. The pale, silvery bluish-green was starting to chip a little. A waste of money, Taige thought. Pretty. But a waste of money.

“I . . . shit. Taige, are you going to look at me or admire your manicure?”

She studied him from under her lashes. “Cullen, I’m tired. It’s been a lousy few days, and I want to go to bed. So if you have something to say, please say it. Otherwise . . .”

His mouth opened. Closed. His lids drooped, shielding the lovely blue-green of his eyes. “You ever feel like making things easy, Taige?”

“Sure. I’ll make this easy.” She got up off the couch and sauntered past him. “Good night. Let me know when you decide to stop being an ass.”

She was five inches past him when he caught her arm.

As he whirled her around to face him, she blanked her expression. “Come on, Taige, would you cut me some slack? The last time that bastard was near my daughter, I’d just gotten her back. I’d almost lost you. He’d been pushing and probing at her head and . . .”

* * *

THE warm, smooth gold of her skin had gone pale.

After all these years together, Cullen knew when he’d hurt her, but he didn’t quite realize what he’d done.

Snapping his mouth shut, he tugged her close. “What now, baby?” Stroking her hair back from her face, he dipped his head, nuzzling her neck.

Taige stood woodenly, her body rigid. Unyielding.

Groaning, Cullen dropped his head and rested it on her shoulder. “Taige, darlin’, you need to remember, I can’t read your mind. I don’t know what you’re thinking unless you tell me.”

Without saying a word, she extricated herself from his arms.

Unable to do anything but let go, Cullen stood. Frustrated, he opened his hands, closed them.

What in the hell had he done now . . .

“She’s my daughter, too,” Taige said quietly. “I know I didn’t give birth to her, but she’s my baby, and sometimes I think you forget how much I love her. Sometimes . . .” Her voice trembled, shuddered. Then she took a deep breath and said again, her voice steady once more, “Sometimes I think you forget that we both agreed to do this together. I’d die before I’d do anything that would harm her. But you don’t seem to think that. You lump me in the same class you’ve placed Taylor in.”

Then she sighed and shoved her hair back from her face. “But here’s the thing . . . I know you hate him. God knows I’ve had my differences with him. But he understands something about people like me and Jillian. What he’s doing right now will probably keep her from going insane—she saw too much this time, Cullen. And it almost broke her.” She slanted a look at him, her gray eyes as cold as ice. “So think about that the next time you decide to demonize him. He’s an icy piece of work, but he understands what this shit can do to people like me, like Jillian. I don’t like his methods, and heaven help him if he seeks her out. But he understand how it haunts us . . . he knows it’s a hell we live with. He could have worked this solo, figured out another way to go forward. But he knew she needed to be a part of it. This was the only safe way she could do it.”

While his mind whirled, tried to process that, she shut the door.

She saw too much.

Almost broke her.

By the time he could even think of anything to say, his legs were numb, his heart too heavy.

“Taige . . .”

But when he went to his wife, she wasn’t there.

She’d settled down in the bedroom where their daughter slept.

Leaving him out there.

Alone.

* * *

SHE stood on the bridge, gazing down into the lake.

It was her birthday, and she was spending it in the only place she could imagine being.

Here . . . where she’d spent so many days with him.

The agony was so great, Amelie just didn’t think she could take it anymore. Each day, she thought maybe, just maybe it would be the day she decided she was done. But she was almost certain today was the day. She’d even dressed for it, wearing a walking suit of black. The jet beads on it caught what little light managed to filter through the clouds, but she barely noticed.

Her mother had asked her how much longer she’d insist on wearing mourning colors. Amelie had answered, “When I no longer feel as though I’m in mourning.”

That time would never come, although she knew she’d have to stop soon. Her parents indulged her, and secretly, she suspected her mother and father were pleased to see her small defiance of Richard. They cared for him as little as she did.

She hoped they’d forgive her if she . . .

No. She wasn’t going to think about it yet.

There had been a great deal of rain lately and the water level was higher than normal. Even now the rain fell in a slow, steady drizzle from the leaden skies. An echo of how she felt inside, she thought. How she’d felt ever since that awful day two months earlier. When she’d watched as Richard lifted a gun, pointed it at a man’s back. Pulled the trigger.

The day he’d killed the man she loved.

It had been here. Odd that she still found comfort here, in this place where he’d died. Where Richard had his men throw the still, pale body of her love into the lake. No body to be buried, no grave for her visit.

All she had were her memories.

Memories that continued to burn so brightly even after two months.

Two months . . . yet it felt like an entire lifetime.

“I told you to stop coming here.”

Looking back, she saw Richard dismount from his horse. A frisson of fear shivered through her, but it passed quickly, and that numbness settled over her once more and she went back to staring at Thom’s resting place.

Perhaps it was fitting, though. He’d always loved it on the water . . .

“Did you hear me? I told you to stop coming here. And enough with the mourning rags,” he snarled. “You were not married to him. You’ll stop this nonsense, Amelie.”

Hard hands grabbed her, forced her around. With dull eyes, she stared at him. “You cannot stop me. You cannot dictate how I dress, where I choose to go.”

He let her go, but the relief she felt lasted just a moment—pain replaced it and she cried out as he struck her across the face. She fell, tumbling to the ground. “You foolish woman. Haven’t you learned yet?”

Learned . . . oh, yes. She’d learned. Through the tears, she stared at him, hoping he could see just how much she hated him. “Learned what?” she spit out. “How much I hate you? Yes. I’ve learned that.”

As he drove his booted foot into her belly, she cried out. Her stays didn’t offer much protection, and her breath gusted out of her in rush. Wheezing, gasping for air, she huddled there, tears leaking out of her eyes as he crouched at her side. “Are you such a silly girl that you don’t realize what I could do to you? I could kill you. As easy as that and not a soul would say a word . . .”

Kill me, then, she thought. Just do it. End this.

But even as she thought that, another thought came to mind. The knife. Thom’s knife. Tucked inside her beaded reticule, almost too large for the pretty, delicate bag she carried on her wrist.

How she longed to grab the knife, use it on Richard.

Did she truly want to die?

Or did she want to see him die?

* * *

STARING at the reflection of her dull face, Dru rested her hands on the counter and tried to think past the headache pounding behind her eyes. The nightmares had been bad, and getting worse lately, but this one . . . bloody f*ck, it had been worse than normal. And she couldn’t even grasp a thread of the dream this time.

A sense of grief. Loss. And then hatred. A blinding, unending hatred . . .

But nothing real. Nothing solid that she could grasp.

It terrified her, those black, uncertain nightmares. She dreaded sleep.

Feared closing her eyes. But at the same time, it was almost like she had to poke at those dreams. Had to understand them, or try to. What if the dream was tied into what she was doing and she needed to know what was hidden inside it?

Groaning, she bent over the sink and splashed water on her face. It wouldn’t do much to help with the headache, but maybe it would clear the cobwebs from her brain. Once she’d handled that, she could decide if she wanted to do anything about looking like death warmed over.

Although she suspected she wouldn’t.

One of her minor skirmishes in her losing battle against her fiancé. He’d hate taking her out looking like this, but he’d never get here in time to do much more than bitch. And he was too anal to reschedule, too. The wedding was getting close, and after all, they did need to make sure her dress fit.

He could damn well take her out with her face the color of a two-day-old corpse and all that rot. She’d take care of her hair, change her clothes, because otherwise, it would be pushing her luck, but she’d still look horrid. And she was just fine with that.

Hopefully, he’d be so aggravated with her, she could try on the damn dress and then come back here and sleep.

All she had to do was get through the bloody fitting.

* * *

THE damn thing didn’t fit. It was too loose across her breasts, meager as they were, too loose in her waist.

“She’s lost weight,” the designer said, his pretty face unhappy. He shot Patrick a worried look and then looked back at Dru. “Oh, honey, you haven’t been crash dieting, have you? You look absolutely perfect as you are. Then you go and lose weight. I’ll have to take the dress in and it may not—”

“Don’t worry about taking the dress in.” Patrick stared at Dru with intense eyes. “We’ll just have to make sure she puts the weight back on.”

The designer was oblivious. He tugged here, pinched there. “Maybe if I try this . . .”

The look in Patrick’s eyes grew icy as he stared at the designer’s back. Suppressing a shiver, Dru touched the designer’s shoulder. “Seth, please don’t worry. It’s only a few pounds. It was silly of me to try and lose so much weight this close to the wedding. I didn’t think it would make such a difference.”

“You were crash dieting, weren’t you?” Seth straightened, glaring at her with accusatory eyes. The pained panic in those green eyes was just plain pathetic, she thought. One might think she’d ruined his wedding.

Giving him another smile, she said, “Not exactly.” She couldn’t call it crash dieting. She just didn’t eat, because she wasn’t hungry. After all, how hungry could she be, sitting next to the monster she was expecting to marry for breakfast, for dinner . . . sometimes he even expected her to eat lunch with him. Every touch was a reminder of what was to come, and her appetite had faded away to nothing.

She’d have to eat, though. That was all there was to it.

“I’ll do better, I promise. I’m actually quite ravenous,” she assured Seth. She doubted she could eat much of anything around Patrick, but she’d just start eating when he wasn’t around.

She’d do it, too. Whatever was necessary. Resolved, she smiled at the designer, refusing to look at the man who was staring at her with iced fury.

* * *

“WHY have you been dieting?”

It was the first time he’d spoken to her since the fitting more than an hour ago.

But then again, this was the first time they’d been assured of privacy since then. Earlier, his assistant had been around.

Lydia—Dru didn’t care for Lydia, tried to avoid her at all costs. That woman was a piece of work. She suspected Lydia had some pretty deep insights into Patrick’s character, but there was no way Dru was going to try for that connection.

No until she had to.

But now she had to deal with this . . . and the icy cold anger she could still feel coming from him. She took her cues from it, just as she’d always done. “It’s not exactly that I’ve been dieting,” she hedged, giving him a vague smile. “I just have a habit of eating when I’m nervous and I’ve been careful not to do that. I guess I’ve been too careful.”

He studied her.

Even though she saw it coming, Dru didn’t move.

The blow was a light, stinging slap—not hard enough to bruise, not even hard enough to leave a mark. Still, the shock of it knocked the breath out of her and she stumbled back against the wall, her head falling forward until her chin rested against her chest.

If she looked at him, he’d see the hatred she felt for him. If she looked at him, he’d see how much she wanted to kill him. So she didn’t dare look at him. Keeping her head low, hair shielding her face, she stood there, shuddering. Shaking.

It wasn’t the first time he’d hit her.

It wouldn’t be the last.

Tears blinded her and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming as he came closer. Not in terror . . . but in rage.

When he reached out to cup her chin, she closed her hands into fists, made herself blank her features. She wanted to beat him bloody. She wanted to spit in his face.

Instead, she stared at him as he critically turned her face this way, then that. “You need to stop pushing me, Ella. We’ve discussed this. You’re a good girl, a good match for me, but sometimes, it’s like you enjoy testing me. Like you enjoy pushing me.”

While the blood roared in her ears, a strange, swimming sensation came over her—voices rising up to clamor in her brain.

“I could kill you. As easy as that and not a soul would say a word . . .”

Water . . . cold and black . . . closing around her—

Not now, she thought desperately. She couldn’t do this around him. Shoring up her shields, she swallowed back the bile, swallowed back all the angry, furious words that rose to her lips, begging to be free.

Go f*ck yourself—

That was what she wanted to tell him. What she wanted to say to him. So badly.

One thing silenced her, and it wasn’t her fear of him. It was the death that followed him like a shroud and the knowledge that it wouldn’t stop until he was stopped.

“I’m sorry, Patrick. I’ll be more aware of things in the future.”

It wasn’t a lie. She’d be far more aware of things.