Kiss in the Dark (15 page)

At the Bronco, Dylan helped her into the passenger seat,
but
didn’t
say another word. He rounded the engine and slipped behind the steering wheel, closing out the pine-filled night gently, when he wanted to slam. They drove through the darkness and back to the cabin in silence. Went inside, in silence. Walked down the hall, in silence.

Slept. Alone. In silence.

* * *

Morning teased in through the sheer curtains. Beth stretched in the comfortable bed, not ready to leave the cocoon of cotton sheets and glorious down. The memory of the dream lingered. The same dream she’d awoken from the night before she married Lance. Of Dylan. Waiting for her at the altar. Tall. Strong. His ridiculously sensuous lips curled into a wicked little half smile. Those eyes of his burning hot and slow.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Go away.”

But, of course, Dylan didn’t take orders or put on airs, didn’t do anything to make life easier on those around him. Not the man, nor his dream counterpart. Otherwise, he would have left her alone the night before her wedding. He would have never forced her to confront herself that night in the cabin.

He wouldn’t have kissed her
last
night.

But no. Not Dylan St. Croix. He came and went as he pleased. Took and gave. Lived. He called it honesty. She called it rebellion. He was so determined not to be like his dignified grandfather or playboy father, his ambitious cousin. He didn’t want to move dutifully through a life preplanned from birth. If he wanted something, he went after it, whether it was politically correct or socially acceptable. Sometimes, Beth thought, he’d gone out of his way to make his St. Croix ancestors roll over in their elaborate graves.

Once, the wildness of it all, the spontaneity, had thrilled her like nothing else. For a short time the passion that drew them together blotted out the rest of the world. But in the end, it had also ripped them apart.

Because Beth wanted
more. More than wildness and exhilaration, more than mind-numbing sex. More than a fire that burned everything in
its path and made her forget about right and wrong. She couldn’t go through life like her mother, so
drunk on desire that she couldn’t see
straight. Think straight. That she hurt other people. That she didn’t care about anyone or anything but being in Dylan’s arms and his bed. Or
the back of his truck. Or his
grandfather’s cushy study. Or the side of a lake. Or—

She wanted stability.

She wanted endurance.

She
wanted love.

Dylan St. Croix couldn’t give her any of that.

The truth cut
deep, and suddenly Beth had to move. She
couldn’t lounge around in bed, reliving the past and fantasizing about
a future that could never be. She had to do
something, anything.

After pulling on a
pair of light blue pants and a loose-
fitting white shirt, she worked a brush through her hair,
noticing that the woman staring
back from the mirror
looked tired, but
an unmistakable glow shimmered in her
eyes. And
Beth smiled. The baby.

Dylan’s baby.

Her chest tightened. She’d never fully be away from Dylan, she realized. Even if she never saw the man in the
flesh again, she’d see him in their
child. Maybe the easy
smile, or the stunning green eyes. The shock of dark, dark hair.

Something
deep inside stirred, and she abruptly
turned
from the mirror and headed
down the hall. The aroma of
coffee came first.
Then the raspy timbre of his voice.

“I’ve got her, don’t worry. She’s not going anywhere.”

Beth
stopped abruptly.

Dylan laughed. “She can try, but sooner or later she’ll realize that’s impossible. There’s nowhere she can go that I won’t find her.”

Her hand instinctively found her stomach, as her heart started to pound painfully against her ribs.

“I’ll take my chances,”
he drawled. “Hell, Zito, who knows? I might even enjoy myself while I’m at it.”

Disappointment stole her breath. Last night, his kiss had tempted her to believe he was on her side, but now here he was, talking about her to Detective Zito like she was a pawn to be moved at will.

Determination pushed aside the shock. Bethany Rae Kincaid St. Croix was nobody’s pawn.

She slipped down the hall and into her room, closing the door and securing a chair beneath the knob. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she eased open the window and crawled onto the wide porch. The scent of pine came to her immediately, drawing her attention to the early morning sun glinting through the pine forest. Without car keys she couldn’t go far, but if Dylan thought she’d made a run for it, then he would look for her. She would slip back inside then, grab the keys and be off before he returned. Now, she had only to hide.

“Going somewhere, sweetheart?”

She spun to see Dylan strolling toward her, a cup of coffee in hand. “Damn you,” she cried, then started to run.

Behind her, she heard the pottery mug shatter against the hard wood of the porch, heard Dylan swear and feet start to pound. Bare feet, she recalled, heading straight for the rockiest area she could find. Her sandals crunched down on gravel, pine needles and cones.

“Bethany!” Dylan shouted. “Stop it!”

She kept running.

“You can’t outrun me,” he warned.

But she didn’t listen.

“You’re pregnant, for God’s sake!”

That got her. She put a hand to the small swell of her stomach, and stopped. Dylan was right. She could never outrun him. No good could come of trying.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?”
Dylan roared
from behind her.

Lifting her chin, she turned to face him. He stood there barefoot and bare-chested, faded jeans hugging his hips and long legs, dark hair a little wild. And something inside her started to thrum. Those primeval eyes of his were dark, his mouth in a hard line. Whiskers covered his jaw,
thicker
than the night before, with just a trace of gray. He looked like he didn’t know whether to throttle her or kiss her senseless.

“I heard you talking to Detective Zito,” she said, and the words were breathy, winded.

He stepped closer. “It’s not against the law.”

“I was naive to believe you were on my side,” she rushed on, before she did something foolish like lift a hand to touch the dark curly hair of his chest. “You’re in this with him, aren’t you? Trying to get me to trust you and confess—”

“Whoa,” he said, frowning. “Back up. What are you talking about?”

“I heard you!” The words tore out, desperate, broken. “You told him where I am. You made it sound like a game! Like you’re keeping me here until he’s ready to file charges—”

“Bethany.”
In one svelte move he had her shoulders in his big hands. “Listen to me, damn it! Yes, I told him where you are. Whether we like it or not, you’re a suspect.” His gaze bore down on her, hard, penetrating. His voice sounded like broken glass. “If you vanish into thin air, that’s going to raise more than a few eyebrows. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather my child not spend his first night in jail before he’s at least seventeen years old.”

She blinked up at him. “Jail?”

“If Zito or Livingston thought you ran, they would put an APR out for you so fast it would make your pretty head spin. The D.A. would be chomping at the bit. The media.” He pulled her closer. “I had no choice, don’t you understand?
No choice!
For
you.
For the baby. I had to tell him.”

The logic penetrated the haze of betrayal that sent her running into the cool morning. He almost made it sound like he was protecting her. No, she corrected. Not her. The baby. His baby.
Theirs.

“There’s nothing around here for miles—where did you think you were going?”

She glanced around, saw the endless sea of pine. “Away.” He didn’t need to know her plan.

“There is no ‘away.’ Not from the truth. No matter where you turn, it’s always waiting.”
Regret shadowed his eyes. “Only cowards pretend otherwise.”

“I’m not a coward,” she said, squaring her shoulders. Her mother was a coward, too scared to take control of her life, too weak to resist temptation. Too wrapped up in her own wants, her own desires, to think about the people she let down.

Beth had done everything in her power to control and shape her own destiny. To make sure nothing ever swept her away.

“You can tell yourself you ran because you heard me on the phone all you want,”
Dylan murmured, sliding a hand from her shoulder up her neck, to the side of her face. “But we both know the truth is you ran because of what happened last night.”

She stiffened. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing? Almost making love is nothing? You’re going to pretend that wasn’t you and me on that blanket last night?”

Making love. The words scraped over her. “No, Dylan. Almost having sex with you is something I don’t ever, ever want to forget.”

His eyes flashed. “Bethany—”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand from her face. She didn’t want him touching her.

“I thought I remembered what it was like between us,” she said, giving him the brutal honesty he swore by. “Even though I tried to forget. I thought I remembered the intensity, the insanity. I thought I remembered the way you could play me like a song, the craziness of it all. But the night of the snowstorm I realized how wrong I was. I realized the images that hau—” She broke off the words abruptly, dangerously close to revealing too much.

“That what, Bethany?”

She sighed. “That the images were nothing more than pencil sketches.” Incomplete. Faded.

“And the last time we were here?” he asked, as she’d known he would. Dylan never left loose ends dangling. While Lance had been a fan of the unsaid, Dylan demanded every blunt detail.

“That night was Technicolor,” she admitted. “That night was 3-D.” Hot, vivid, all consuming. Just like before. “There’s no point in pretending something doesn’t flare between us, but—”

“That something is passion.”

“And that something is dangerous. It doesn’t last. It’s not what I want. And that’s why I can’t let myself forget. Last night is as close as I can come to going over the edge again.”

The little muscle in the hollow of his cheek started to thump. “I didn’t let you fall.”

“No you didn’t.” Surprise lingered. “And for that I’m grateful.” There between her legs, with a hand on her breast and a finger inside, he’d known full well how badly her body burned. Many men would have pressed their advantage, kissed a little deeper, teased her nipple a little more relentlessly, urging her mind to surrender to her body. One more touch and she would have gone up in smoke.

And they’d both known it.

But Dylan had practically ripped himself away from her, held himself back like a deadly force field separated them.

“I can’t take the chance again,” she told him, her throat unbearably tight. “My life is blowing up all around me—I could go to jail for a crime I didn’t commit. I’m pregnant. I can’t tiptoe through your land mines, as well.”

He winced. “You’re running.”

“I call it surviving.”
Without waiting for his reply, she turned and walked back to the cabin.

* * *

The midday news paraded across the television, the cardboard anchor smiling from one tragedy to the next. Beth sat on the cushy sofa, her feet curled beneath her, one hand idly caressing her stomach. Dylan had vanished into his room half an hour before, taking the car keys with him. Shortly thereafter, the sound of running water had rattled the pipes, necessitating every scrap of her concentration to not imagine him standing naked beneath the shower spray.

Run, instinct had prompted. Leave. Now. She could, she knew. Technically, nothing stopped her. Except the truth.

The St. Croixs had nestled their cabin in the middle of nowhere. The nearest neighbor lived over ten miles away. And while a week before Beth would have preferred wandering the old-growth pine forests to being alone with Dylan, her pregnancy changed everything. She couldn’t risk becoming lost or dehydrated, couldn’t risk injury. She couldn’t risk her child.

“We go now live to the Portland home of Sierra Landaiche, the new wife of world-renowned pianist Henrique Landaiche and mother of Bethany St. Croix.”

Beth grabbed the remote control and ramped up the volume.

“You may recall Ms. St. Croix, ex-wife of Assistant District Attorney Lance St. Croix, is widely rumored to be a suspect in his murder. As of last night, she’s also missing.”

Adrenaline shot through Beth like poison. She surged to her feet, heart pounding.

“Crimes of passion,” Yvonne Kelly began with a glint to her eyes. “Crimes of the heart. An abrupt divorce left a beautiful woman with nothing, and now a political star poised to soar lies dead instead. How can a fairy tale go so wrong? Just where does the shadow of innocence end, and that of guilt begin?” Turning to Sierra, the melodramatic reporter smiled. “Mrs. Landaiche, what can you tell us about your daughter’s relationship with her ex-husband? Is it true she was desperate to get him back?”