KILLING ME SOFTLY (22 page)

Cain indulged the little blade of satisfaction. Crossing toward Renee, he wondered if she realized this was the first time she'd asked him personally about the night Savannah disappeared. "Can I assume by your question that you no longer think I did?"

Abruptly, she looked up. "I never said that I did."

"Not with words, no. But actions,
cher
, speak so much louder."

"Someone once told me the only way to stay one step ahead was to let myself go to the darkest place first. To envision the absolute worst. To let myself feel and smell and taste it. Let myself live it. Then, I'd be prepared for whatever happened."

Cain went very still. "This someone, he was a cop?" Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. The motto she'd just described was the lifeblood of every good police officer.

She nodded. "Yes."

There was something pained about her voice, her expression. Something sad. "You were in love with him."

The newspaper article fell from her hand, and he had his answer. "Yes."

The study was a large room, warm and cozy. But the way Renee kept looking at him brought the walls closer and the temperature dropping low. "He broke your heart."

She looked away from him, toward his desk, where the picture of him and Savannah lay facedown. "I thought so."

Her voice was so soft and brittle Cain barely heard the words. "And now? You no longer think so?"

"I'm starting to think I might have broken his."

The urge to reach out to her was strong, to pull her to his chest and comfort her. But he wasn't a man for seconds. When he and Renee Fox came together, there would be no ghosts between them—not hers, not his.

"Then maybe you should go to him," he suggested, hating the damn stupid words even as he said them. "Explain things."

Her lips curved, but the gesture was too sad to be a smile. "Some things can't be undone," she said. "Can't be fixed. Sometimes there's too much damage."

Broken, he thought once again. But this time he no longer knew who he was describing—Renee, or himself. "And so you came here," he said. "To Bayou de Foi to sink your teeth into a meaty story and find a way to forget your demons." It was a strategy he knew well. "Is it working?"

"Not like I'd planned," she said, and her voice was quiet.

Fragile, he amended. For all her fire and strength, she suddenly looked as fragile as spun glass. If he so much as touched her, there was a damn fine chance she would simply shatter. "That's why you kissed me like that."

Her eyes met his. "Like how?"

"Like you knew me," he answered without hesitation, and her eyes clouded.

As a cop, he'd learned to state theories as facts rather than questions. The unexpected made liars stumble. Like standing naked in a spotlight, unrehearsed reactions left nowhere to hide.

"You think in my mind I was kissing someone else?" she asked.

He moved closer. "You tell me,
cher
."

It was a challenge and they both knew it. He expected her to pull back or turn away, to shutter her eyes and attack his ego. Instead she tilted her chin, assaulting him with a smile so slow, so mesmerizing, his chest locked up.

"It would be easier that way, if none of this was real. If that kiss was for another man. If this," she said, lifting his hand to her chest, where her heart strummed hard and fast, "was for someone else."

And Cain could no more stop himself than he could stop the shadows starting to fall across the room. He dragged her to him and stabbed his hands into her hair, tilted her head and took her mouth with his own.

CHAPTER TWENTY

H
e needed to go. He needed to get to his feet and get in his car, drive back into town. His people needed him. They were uneasy. Scared. Two of their own had been killed.

On his watch.

Just like Jesse.

He'd promised to protect him. He'd promised to get him to the field hospital. He'd hacked his way through the hot, mosquito-infested jungle across sunset and sunrise, with his best friend slung over his shoulder in a firefighter's hold. He'd given him his water. He'd given him his rations.

Jesse had died anyway.

The memory slammed down on Edouard like a hunter's tarp, and squeezed. Dropping to his knees, he rested his head against the crypt and opened his mouth, tried to breathe.

I'm sorry
. The words squeezed through him, but they wouldn't form.
So dog-damn sorry.

He'd promised, damn it. He'd promised Jesse. His best friend. He'd promised him that he would take care of his brother, Travis. That he would look out for him. Keep him out of trouble.

Christ God have mercy, he'd made that same promise to so many other people over the years—his parents, Cain's father, Gabe's father, countless others who looked to the sheriff to be a demigod and make everything okay.

But Savannah had died anyway, damn near taking Cain with her. For a time he'd been sure the Lambert brothers had sicced her on his nephew, that while she warmed his bed at night, she plotted his downfall by day.

In the end, though, in one of those bitter, unforeseen ironies, it had been her death that had nearly destroyed his nephew.

Now Travis.

He'd had to tell Millie. The drive to the old Acadian house had been excruciating. The look on her face when she'd walked out onto the porch, with her silver-streaked hair falling against her cheeks and a dishcloth in her hand—

She'd collapsed before Edouard could get to her.

Jerking back from the tomb, he shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, tried hard not to let his hands shake as he fumbled for his lighter.

"Eddy."

The soft voice exploded through him like a hand grenade. Everything inside of him jerked. But on the outside, he went totally still.

"I thought I might find you here."

He could hear the leaves beneath her feet, but he didn't turn to look. Didn't want to see her walking through the old cemetery.

Didn't want her to see him.

Hands then. Soft. Strong. On his shoulder.

And then he smelled lavender and roses and vanilla, and the moisture he'd been holding back squeezed to the front of his eyes.

"It's not your fault." Quietly, as though she had every damn right to be there, she settled down behind him and slid her arms around his middle. Her face close to his, she held him. Ran a hand along his arm.

She was so soft, damn it. So sweet.

"Sometimes bad things happen to good people," she said in that soft melodic way of hers that he still dreamed of at night. After nearly twenty-five years. Sliding her hand to his, she plucked the cigarette from his fingers. "You can't stop them all." The moisture leaked from his eyes. "Eddy, listen to me—"

"Stop it." He couldn't do this. He couldn't sit on the damp ground of the cemetery and let Lena Mae comfort him. If he let go, even for one little minute…

He didn't know what would happen. That was the problem. But he knew it wouldn't be good.

On a low growl he stood and stepped away from her, turned toward the parking lot and walked away.

The kiss was hard and deep and demanding, and with all that Renee gave, Cain's only thought was that he wanted more. She tasted of need and desperation and, heaven help him, wintergreen.

That should have stopped him. But this time he embraced the punch of familiarity and lifted her against the desk. Need blotted out everything he didn't want to think of, all the secrets and the lies, leaving only the near-violent desire to possess. He didn't know how she did it, how she tied him into knots by simply walking into a room, but at that moment he flat didn't give a damn. He just wanted … her.

She opened for him, curling her legs around his thighs and pushing her hip against his erection, leaving little doubt that she wanted him every bit as much. He yanked her blouse from her pants and put his hand to her flesh, loved the feel of her skin, all hot and smooth. She moaned as he slid higher, toward her bra, where his fingers itched to slide beneath silk and to cup. Where his mouth wanted to taste. And suck.

"Good Lord, it's true."

The voice, low and overly dripping with disapproval, came from behind them. Cain felt Savannah go very still—

Then felt himself jerk back as if she'd taken a hot poker to his heart.

Renee
. Sweet Lord have mercy on his pathetic soul. The sight of Renee standing there with her hair tangled and her mouth bruised, her clothes half-off, hit him like a bucket of ice water.

He stumbled away from her, just barely kept himself from making a sign of the cross.

"It's not like you to think with the wrong head, brother," Saura said from the doorway. "Can I assume by the look on your face that you forgot who you were about to maul on your desk?"

The question scored a direct hit. Swearing under his breath, Cain glared at his sister. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Her smile was overly sweet. "Last I checked it was my home, too," she drawled, then looked from him to his desk. "It's a darn good thing Uncle Eddy called me or I might not have stopped you in time. And to think I practically ran in here expecting blood … when it turns out you and I must have very different definitions of what it means to crucify someone."

He didn't need his last conversation with his sister thrown into his face. "I have my way, you have yours," he drawled, refusing to yield to that dark place inside, the one that knew he was being a son of a bitch. "It's a matter of technique."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Renee shove her shirt into her waistband and step forward, and before she even spoke, he felt the hurt. "And I have mine," she said with a cutting smile, and once again Cain had to wonder just who was the hunter, and who was the hunted.

Saura's eyes flashed. "Apparently so." Strolling closer, she glanced at the police reports scattered across his desk. "What kind of game is this, brother? Show and fee—I mean tell?"

He heard the censure in her voice but refused to let himself react. The last thing Saura needed was anger, from him or anyone, even if that's exactly what she continuously went in search of.

"Always my favorite," he said to her, then looked at Renee and felt the punch deep in his gut. Saura was right. He'd almost taken Renee right there on the desk. "Next time, you might want to stick with words,
belle amie.
They're safer."

The first Robichauds arrived in Bayou de Foi in 1852. They brought with them great wealth, and even greater controversy.

There was something not quite right about Cora, the locals said. She had that look to her, the way she could see right through people. And she knew things she shouldn't know. Did things that shouldn't be possible.

After a visit to Cora, little Sarah Aucoin, blind since the day she was born, suddenly could see.

Old man Guidry, wasting away before his wife's eyes, was suddenly out working the fields again.

And exactly nine months after an afternoon visit for tea, the long-suffering and chronically barren Laura Leigh Melancon gave her husband twin sons.

The locals grew wary. The church investigated. A voodoo queen felt threatened. Rumors of a mysterious stained-glass window in Cora's possession, smuggled out of France, circulated. But no proof was ever found.

Sitting cross-legged on the guest bed, Renee blinked and reread the last paragraph for the tenth time, then blinked again, but the words kept blurring. No matter how fascinating she found the legend of lovers separated by war and condemned by a curse, the scene in the study kept playing in her mind. The odd revelation about Adrian. The risk she'd taken in parroting Cain's own words back to him. The way he'd torn himself away from her, then walked away.

It didn't fit. Like all the Robichauds before him, Cain was a man of confrontation. He met his opponents head-on. He didn't run or hide, didn't turn the other cheek. When riled, he attacked.

But today he'd done none of that. He'd just … walked away.

She hadn't seen him since. He'd been absent at dinner, absent during the evening, leaving her alone with his sister. Once, the two had been friends. Renee had been one-hundred-percent certain one day Saura would become her sister-in-law. The two had even joked about the dark-haired children Saura and Adrian were fated to have, with their father's penchant for adventure and their mother's flare for rebellion.

Though Saura tried to hide it, Renee and Adrian had both discovered what a tender heart she had. Tender, and bruised. It was so easy to understand why she did everything she could to be the anti-Robichaud. Hers was a patriarchal family. Male children were the prize, the concrete assurance that the family name would live on. Females were expendable. So while Saura was technically the oldest, Cain's birth eleven short months later rendered her practically invisible to her father.

Her mother's death from leukemia two years later stripped away any chance she had to feel valued.

Saura grew up a second-class citizen in her own family, despite the close relationship she shared with her brother. As a teenager, she began to act out. She drank too much. Lost her virginity too early. Went places she shouldn't go. Experimented with things she had no business even knowing about. Anything, and everything, to prove to her family she was not invisible.

Then she met Adrian. The spark had been immediate and intense, transforming Saura from a prickly hellion into a woman in the full bloom of love.

Then Adrian was killed.

And from the look of things, Saura right along with him. Renee had barely recognized the shell of a woman who'd charged into the study. No longer bright and vibrant and daring, but faded, like a camellia left out too long in the hot summer sun. Her curves were gone. Her skin was too pale, her eyes too dull.

Closing the book, Renee drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. If conventional wisdom was to be believed, Cain was responsible for destroying his own sister. He'd allegedly killed Adrian, after all.

But they were wrong. All of them. The cops. The newspapers. The gossipmongers who thrived on scandal.