The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(117)

He gazed out the window at nothing. “This guy I know … His wife touched him in the middle of the night, and he woke up with his hands around her throat. And a woman I served with … She grabbed her baby from day care, convinced the kid was in some kind of mortal danger, and took him on a five-hundred-mile road trip without telling anybody, including her husband. Nearly ended up in jail for kidnapping. Another guy … He and his girlfriend were having an argument. Nothing important. But out of nowhere, he slammed her into the wall. Broke her collarbone. Do you want that to happen to you?” Bitter lines bracketed his mouth. “Luckily, time took care of the worst of it for me. I’m okay now. And that’s the way it has to stay. Now do you understand?”

She locked her knees, braced herself. “Exactly what am I supposed to understand?”

He finally looked at her, his expression stony. “Why I can’t give you any more than I already have. Why I can’t give you a future.”

How did he know that was what she wanted when even she didn’t?

“You look at me with those eyes I could swim in,” he said, “and you ask for everything. But I’m never letting myself go back to that dark place.” He moved away from the window, a few steps closer to her. “I’m not capable of big emotions. I can’t be. Now do you understand?”

She said nothing. Waited.

His chest heaved. “I don’t love you, Lucy. Do you hear me? I don’t love you.”

She wanted to smash her hands over her ears, clutch her stomach, crash into the walls. She hated his brutal honesty, but she couldn’t punish him for it, not in light of what he’d just told her. She pulled on a reservoir of strength she hadn’t known she possessed “Get real, Panda. I walked out on Ted Beaudine. Do you really think I’m going to lose sleep over you and our hot little summer fling?”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at her, those mineral blue eyes cloaked in darkness.

She couldn’t bear another second of this. She turned away, not letting herself move too quickly. Into the hallway … Out the front door … She walked blindly into the night, the awful knowledge she’d tried so hard to suppress oozing to the surface.

She’d let herself fall in love with him. Against all reason, all common sense, she’d fallen deeply in love with this emotionally stunted man who couldn’t love her back.

She ended up in the boat, not curled asleep in the bow where Toby had hidden himself, but sitting up, wide awake—the whole furious, sticky, heartbroken mess of her.





Chapter Twenty-five




HIS CAR WAS GONE THE next morning, along with him. Lucy stumbled into the house, threw her clothes into the washer, and took a shower, but she had a splitting headache and she didn’t feel any better when she came out.

All she could find to wear was her black bathing suit and one of his Tshirts. She wandered through the empty house barefoot. He’d taken most of his clothes, his work folders, and the commuter coffee mug he carried around in the morning. So many emotions overwhelmed her, each one more painful than the last—her pity for what he’d been through; her anger at the universe, at herself, for falling in love with such a damaged man. And her anger at Panda.

Despite his words, he’d misled her. With every tender touch, every shared glance and intimate smile, she’d felt him telling her he loved her. Lots of men had been through traumatic experiences, but that didn’t mean they ran away.

Her anger made her feel better, and she nursed it. She couldn’t afford to pity him or herself. Far better to turn that pity into antagonism. Run, you coward. I don’t need you.

She decided to move back into his house that same day.

Despite her misery, she couldn’t forget her promise to help Bree clean up from last night’s vandalism, but before she could get to the cottage, Mike called and told her that he and Toby were handling the mess—no girls allowed. She didn’t protest.

She waited until afternoon to get her things from the cottage. She discovered a dreamy-eyed Bree sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad, an equally infatuated Mike at her side. The faint beard-burn on Bree’s neck and Mike’s tender, proprietary manner didn’t leave much doubt about what the two of them had been up to last night while Toby slept.

“You can’t leave,” Bree said when Lucy revealed her intention. “I’m working on a plan to save my business, and I’m going to need you more than ever.”

Mike tapped a legal pad covered with notes in Bree’s precise handwriting. “We don’t want you in that big house by yourself,” he said. “We’ll worry about you.”

But the two of them could barely take their eyes off each other long enough to talk to her, and Toby was no better. “Mike and Bree are getting married!” he announced when he came into the kitchen.

Bree smiled. “Settle down, Toby. Nobody’s getting married to anybody yet.”

The looks Mike and Toby exchanged suggested they had other ideas about that.

Lucy wouldn’t spoil their happiness with her own misery. She promised to come over the next afternoon and waved good-bye.

She continued to nourish her anger, but after a few days of furious, solitary walks and lengthy bike rides that still didn’t wear her out enough to sleep, she knew she had to do something else. Finally she opened the laptop Panda had left behind and got back to work. At first she couldn’t concentrate, but gradually she found the distraction she needed.