A Dark Lure (27 page)

It suddenly all seemed distant. Trivial. He should have been man enough to realize that his father had become mentally trapped inside his own grief. That he’d been incapable of forgiving Cole his sins, incapable of trying to move his family forward. In retrospect, Cole could have approached it all differently.

And right on the spot he made a new goal. Downed phone lines be damned, he was going to drive into town tomorrow morning, find Clayton Forbes in person, and draw his battle line in the sand. He was going to fight for what was left of this farm and family.

“The ranch will be safe,” he said quietly. “I’ll do my best by her.”

His father stared at him long and hard. He reached abruptly for his wheels, spun his chair around, and wheeled off toward the hall. “Going to bed,” he called over his shoulder.

Cole surged to his feet. “Here, let me take you up.”

“Over my dead body. Zack!” the old man barked, “Zack—get me the hell out of here.”

Cole stared as Zack wheeled his father out into the hallway and toward the elevator, a mix of hurt, compassion, love, an unfamiliar cocktail of sensations ebbing and pulling like a tide inside him.

“What was that about?”

He spun around. Olivia. She’d caught him unguarded again. He pulled his features back in line.

“He’s just being a jerk.”

“You should go easy on him. It’s the medication.”

“You need to stop making apologies for him.”

Eyes like flint met his.

“Pour me a drink?” she said. “I could use one, and I need to ask you something.”

Tori marched faster into the darkness and wind, outdistancing her dad, her heart banging in her chest. Her skin was hot. She wanted her mother.

A sharp cracking of twigs sounded in the brush next to her. Something big moved. Scared, she froze on the spot. Ghostly aurora played over the sky. Wind swished leaves. Then her dad came running over the lawn.

The noise sounded again, like a large animal crashing away through the dry brush and leaves. Bear, or deer.

Her father placed a hand on her shoulder. “Who’s there?” he demanded, peering into the shadows as his other hand went for his holster.

Wind gusted. Leaves curled and swirled. Nothing more moved in the bush.

“Come,” he whispered, his gaze still probing the dark shadows in the scrub.

“Why?” she said as they moved toward the cabin. “Why did you lie? You said you were in security. You lied about being a cop.”

They reached the porch, and he crouched down, took her shoulders in his hands, his attention still flicking into the darkness behind her, watching for whatever had made the noise.

“Sometimes it’s just easier
not
to say you’re a cop. When you tell people you’re in law enforcement, everything changes. I didn’t want to talk about my job. I didn’t want to talk about your mom. About . . . things that hurt.” He inhaled a deep, shuddering, shaky breath. His eyes glimmered with wetness in the dark. “Sometimes it’s easier not to have to tell strangers over and over again. Just to be private.”

She stared at him, her own eyes burning. Lip quivering. “Why are you so nice to her? To Olivia. What about Mom?”

Water slapped against the dock below the gazebo.

“Oh, Tori . . . it’s nothing like that. Not at all.” He smoothed hair back from her brow. “Someday you’ll understand. Someday soon. I promise.”

“You didn’t tell me why I might have to go and live with Aunt Lou if they can operate and fix you.”

“I know. And I was going to. I never wanted to hold anything back from you or make you worried. I thought it would be good to get away for Thanksgiving before explaining it all. Because I first wanted some time to put things right between us. And about Aunt Lou . . .” He hesitated. “After the operation there could be a couple of months of recovery getting my brain and motor functions back to full speed. There could be physiotherapy . . . There are variable outcomes for this kind of surgery. So, during that recuperation period, it would make sense for you to go east and stay with Lou and the family, go to school there for a while.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Do you really want to go back to your old school in Vancouver? I’m not so sure it will be easy after that fire incident. Or the fight with Julia Borsos. You certain you want that?”

She glanced at her boots. “Maybe not.”

He cleared his throat. “And then, when I’m back to full speed again, I can come out east, and stay there too. Lou and Ben have that big, big house on the lake. A cabin where you and I could live. You could finish school out there.”

“You’d move, too?”

He smiled, his teeth glinting in the dark. “Yes. There’s little I wouldn’t do for you, Tori. One day you’ll see that.”

A fresh start. Like the damselflies—a second chance. It held a faint and distant promise. She really didn’t want to return to her old school. Or the old house, even. It hurt.

He put his arm around her shoulders. Warm. Comforting. Her safe, invincible dad again. “Look. Look up there.” He pointed.

The stars in the dark vault of sky were endless. Soft green and blue light with tinges of peach at the edges waved across it in silent curtains. The curtains of gods.

“I think she’s watching us from up there.”

Tears leaked silently down her face. And in that instant she was certain that from up there, everything must look like it had a plan. A reason. A pattern. She just couldn’t see it from down here.

Olivia rubbed her knee—a nervous tic—as she sat by the fire waiting for Cole to bring her drink.

He set a bottle of scotch and two glasses with ice on the low table in front of the fire, poured two drinks and handed her one.

She took the glass, and their fingers brushed. Heat crackled up her arm, and she felt a clench of desire that was at odds with her nerves. This man did things to her.

“I’m pleased to see that you’re still talking to me.” He seated himself on the sofa beside her. Close. He smiled but his eyes were tired. He looked rough again, the firelight casting hard planes over his face. He seemed edgy, a little drunk perhaps. Yet there was something solid and safe about him.

“I need to wait for the last guests to leave,” she said. “And I have some questions.”

He watched the fire, cradling his glass in his big hands. “Shoot.”

She’d been going to press him over his concerns about Gage Burton, but she also didn’t want to tell him why that newspaper and fishing lure were such a trigger.

“What happened with Myron?” she said instead, chickening out. “You goad him again?”

A wry smile curved his gorgeous lips, and he was silent for a while, as if weighing something. He sucked back his whole drink, reached forward, and poured another.

“I told him that I had concerns about Burton and his interest in you.”

She felt the blood drain from her cheeks. Her pulse quickened.
“That’s
what upset him?”

He snorted. “He wasn’t upset. He just asked if he could count on me to have your back.”

She sipped her drink. “And you said what?”

He glanced at her. A beat of silence. “I said yes.”

Olivia swallowed at the intensity in his eyes. It was as if he were devouring her, owning her. She fought an urge to shift slightly back in her seat.

“Do you like him—Burton?”

“I think he’s . . . kind. I believe he’s trying to do his best by Tori, even if he’s making mistakes. But I feel he’s genuine.”

I don’t feel about him like I feel about you.

“Yet you seem worried now,” he prompted. “You’re asking questions now.”

She glanced away. Tori’s words in the boat came to mind.

Why did you go with two guns
. . .
what’s that in your boot now
. . .

Olivia owned a pistol herself. But it wasn’t legal. Handguns were restricted firearms in this part of the world. They required a special “authorization to carry.”

“Has anything . . . odd happened, Liv? Beyond the episode with the newspaper and lure that rattled you so badly?”

Her heart beat faster. She felt trapped.
Shit
. She wanted to talk about this as much as she didn’t. She thought about getting up to go, but he placed his solid hand over her knee, halting her.

“Look, we both know something bad happened in your past. And I don’t want to press you on that, unless you want to tell me. I just got a vibe about Burton and wondered if there was some link between him and your past.”

Moth wings of panic fluttered through her stomach. Her thoughts turned to the berries, the scarf, the tracks, the sense of being watched, followed. The coincidence of this freakish Birkenhead murder with so-called echoes of the Watt Lake Killings
.
If she turned it all one way, she could see them as coincidences. Turn them another and she was no longer so sure. Pressure mounted in her to tell him. But she couldn’t.

No matter how tempting the need for comfort, or the allure of having someone truly at her back, she couldn’t become Sarah Baker again.

Olivia took a deep sip of her drink, holding her glass tight so he wouldn’t detect the tremble in her hands.

“So, just be careful about him, okay?”

Her gaze flicked back to him. Nerves deepened at the gravitas she saw in his eyes.

“Also, know that I’m here if you need me.”

She swallowed. Her skin grew hot. She felt she was at a crossroads, on the razor’s edge of telling Cole everything, of wanting to lean into him, be with him in more ways than one, but she was unable.

Laughter from the table near the bar startled them both. Her gaze shot across the room. The last of the guests were getting up to leave.

They waved and called out their good-byes. The room fell silent as the door closed behind them, just the roar of the fire and the battering of the wind outside.

“There’s something else I want you to know.” He reached out and took her hand in his. Olivia’s muscles snapped wire tight. Her body warred between the urge to pull away and an impulse to turn her palm faceup under his, to lace her fingers through his. Her mouth turned dry. A buzz began in her head.

“I agree with what my father did. I want you to have the ranch in trust. I want you to run it.”

“Cole, I told you, I don’t want—”

His thumb moved under the hem of her sweater sleeve, inching gently along the ridge of her scars. Their eyes met. She tensed, almost pulled away but didn’t, her world narrowing. She was vaguely conscious of Kim and Zack heading into the kitchen with the last of the dishes.

“It’s the right thing,” he whispered.

“Why?” Her voice came out thick.

“Because I’m thinking of staying, helping. You said it yourself, ranching is hard work, and getting the livestock side of things up and running again is going to require an injection of capital. I could handle that end of the business, if you concentrated on the year-round tourism-destination side of things.”

She stared at him in silence for several beats. “It’s the drink talking. You really
are
like your father.”

His eyes darkened, and his energy changed. She could feel a dark electricity crackling off him in silent waves. He inhaled, deep, as if drinking her in, absorbing, consuming, trying to decide something. He glanced away, still holding her hand, his calloused thumb softly stroking against her palm. She could barely breathe. And she did it, she turned her palm up against his, lacing her fingers through his. He tightened his hand and his gaze snapped to hers. In his eyes she could read desire, fierce need.

She felt it in her own.

Slowly, he ran his hand up the outside of her arm, up to her neck. He cupped the back of her neck, fingers threading into thick hair. He drew her closer as he leaned toward her. He brushed his warm lips over her mouth.

A bolt of fire cracked through her.

She pulled away abruptly. Got up, heart stampeding. She stared down into his gray eyes. He stared back. Unspoken things surged between them. Things she did not want to broach. Too close, too intimate—not on just a physical level. She could not go there. Wherever he was going.

“Olivia?” His voice was thick, dusky.