Love, Come to Me(77)

“It would be less painful to butt my head against a brick wall. He wasn’t about to budge.”

“And you exploded,” Lucy said ruefully.

Heath went over to the whiskey and poured himself another drink, his sideways glance silently daring her to offer a word of protest. Wisely Lucy kept silent. “I told him I’d write the editorial myself. He said he’d leave the paper if I did.”

“Heath.” Lucy felt sick at the thought of all his plans, all his hopes, disappearing so quickly.

“I can’t run this editorial the way it is now, Cin,” he said thickly, tossing down the third drink. “I’d be betraying everything I believe in. And I can’t ignore the whole thing. That’s what the paper is for, to take on issues like this.”

She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them, her mind and heart in turmoil. What could she do? What could she say to him?

A sharp, explosive sound startled her as Heath threw his glass into the fireplace. It shattered into hundreds of glittering shards, causing a whirl of sparks to fly up from the crumbling log. Flinching, half-frightened by his anger, she returned her gaze to her lap.

“Tell me how to help you,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t know how.” She was aware of him walking towards her, she felt the coolness of his shadow cast over her, saw the dark shine of his boots as he stood in front of her.

“I don’t know either,” he said huskily, his accent intensified by the liquor. “All I know is that I’m sick of all of it. I’m tired of fighting to gain an inch of headway, when nothing’s going to stop the tide. I’m tired of making decisions. I left the South . . . because I was tired of being defeated . . . oh, God, Cinda, there are things . . . I haven’t told you . . .” With a sigh he dropped to his knees and buried his head in her lap, his hands tangling in the scented silk of her skirts. Lucy froze. She heard a quiet, broken sound, and she looked down at his golden head with panic and astonishment. Careless, taunting, hot-tempered Heath Rayne, with his head in her lap and his fingers clutching the folds of her dress.

Suddenly she didn’t have to worry anymore about what to say to him, because the words were tumbling out of her mouth too fast to keep them in. She bent over him, stroking his hair, murmuring to him softly, urgently. “Of course you’re tired . . . you’ve been working so hard . . . of course you are. I know you haven’t told me everything . . . it doesn’t matter.”

“I left because it won’t stop . . . until their spirit is broken . . . I couldn’t stay to watch it.”

“No . . . no, of course not,” she soothed, making no effort to argue or reason with him. Later would be the time for reasoning and making sense out of it all. Now he was tired and defeated, and he just wanted a few hours in which he didn’t have to think about anything. She remembered how that felt, how it had been that night after she had run to him after Daniel had rejected her. Heath had been there to help her, letting her draw from his strength. Did she have enough strength to sustain him in the same way?

“I couldn’t help . . .”

“Shhhh . . . everything will be fine.”

“You don’t understand what it was like—”

“Yes, I do. I understand,” she said, resting her cool fingers on the back of his neck.

“No . . . I went back, I saw . . . they were all there . . . Raine . . . Raine was there too. Clay had been wounded—his back just . . . gave out. They needed me. I could have helped. I would have taken care of all of them . . . I wouldn’t have touched her. I wouldn’t have.”

“Heath?” Lucy asked, her breath disturbing his tawny hair as she bent over him. “Who is Raine? Who are you talking about?”

He only shook his head, catching at her small hand and pressing the back of it against his scarred temple.

Frowning sharply, Lucy wondered what had gone on between him and Raine, whoever she was. Love? Hate? She struggled to accept the fact that in the past he might have loved another woman deeply, given her all that he had not given Lucy. Maybe it had been Raine. Lucy had not known until now how deeply jealousy could be felt.

“She wouldn’t admit . . . she needed me . . .” He wiped his sleeve across his eyes in a gesture that caught at her heart, and then he dropped his head back into the comfortable hollow of her lap. She was silent as she listened to him, torn between hoping that he would go on and not wanting to hear any more. “She never did. ”

Lucy rubbed her knuckles across his temple in a hesitant caress.

“I wanted you,” he said, his voice soft and singed, “the first time I saw you. Did I tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“It was raining. You were crossing the street. You took longer than everyone else, because . . . because you were picking your way around all the little . . . puddles. I wanted you.”

“Heath—”

“After I found you at the river, you kept calling me Daniel . . . but it was me. It was me holding you—”

“I knew it was.”

“But you kept . . .” He sighed and then fell silent, his head and arms becoming heavier in her lap as he relaxed. Lucy knew that if he passed out, she would never be able to get him up onto the bed. The thought of having to call someone else to help her galvanized her into action.