Midnight Sins (49 page)

Jaymi had taken Cami to her new home regularly, and

when her husband had been killed in the military it had

been Cami who Jaymi had wanted to stay with her for

a while.

And her father had never seemed to understand

why Jaymi wanted Cami with her. He had never

understood why her older sister seemed to love her. If

her mother had felt the same way, Cami had never

sensed it. But neither could she discount the

suspicion. Because there was no way her father could

have resented her and her mother not know it.

There were times Cami and Jaymi swore

Margaret Flannigan had eyes in the back of her head,

because they couldn’t seem to get anything past her

when they were children. She would have known,

despite the sedatives she took. Margaret would have

seen that her husband cared nothing for his younger

daughter.

So why hadn’t Margaret Flannery done

something about it? Why hadn’t her mother left Mark

Flannigan, or at least made the effort to let Cami

know that she accepted her?

Was she so unlovable to the father she had

adored as a child that loving her was impossible?

She wondered as she stared around the house for

long minutes. Was she truly so bad that as her father

said, he had been forced to take her mother away to

Aspen to alleviate Cami’s influence?

Or had he simply found the only way to punish her

for not being the daughter who had died? Because

taking her mother away from Cami truly was the only

way he could have hurt her at that point.

She stood silently for a moment, staring around

the shadowed house, feeling the loneliness that

wrapped around her. That sense of suddenly having

nothing to hold on to and no one to warm her. There

were no parents, no siblings, where once there had at

least been a sister and a mother.

Now there was simply no one but her aunt and

uncle.And Rafe.

When Cami allowed herself to have him.

Yet even he hadn’t come back to the house with

her. He hadn’t followed her, and he wasn’t at her back

door now.

He had given her a choice, and now he was

sticking to it. She could call him. She could come to

him. But he wasn’t going to allow her to excuse her

choice with the excuse that he hadn’t given her a

choice.

With a hard jerk of her head she forced that

thought, that need, back. Moving through the house,

she checked the locks on the doors, checked the

windows, and double-checked the alarm.

She felt restless, on edge. As though a

foreboding followed her, an instinctive warning to

beware that she couldn’t seem to shake. The feeling

had begun at the social, tingled around her on her way

home, and now it had settled into her senses like a

subtle scent she couldn’t shake and yet couldn’t

identify.

She wished she hadn’t danced with Rafe.

Wished she had asked him to follow her home. She

wished he were there with her, and she should know

by now the folly of wishing for things that weren’t

meant to be hers.

Rafe hadn’t followed her home, though; he hadn’t

spoken to her after he had left her back in that little

grotto. And he hadn’t mentioned that claim on her.

Even though Cami knew he had made it.

Even though Rafe was very well aware of the fact

that he had a claim on her and they both knew it it was

a claim she couldn’t shake or deny.

And as his gaze had followed her throughout the

night, she had felt that knowledge. Just as everyone

else at the dance had. Even Emma had been reticent

to say anything about it, or to tease Cami over it. And

normally, Emma was the one to joke about anything.

She had felt his eyes on her nearly every second,

especially if another man had dared to approach her.

As though Rafe’s warning had kept her from

dancing with anyone else. That had nothing to do with

her decision, because she realized he wouldn’t have

really made a scene.

He would be madder than hell. He would hate

every second of it. He would have most likely waylaid

her in private again at first chance. But there wouldn’t

have been a confrontation. Rafer Callahan had more

pride than that.

The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to dance with

anyone else. She hadn’t danced with another man,

slept with another man, or engaged in a serious

flirtation with another man since the first night she had

slept with Rafer. Well, they hadn’t done much sleeping

that night.

The most she had done in the past was to go out

to dinner a few times with other men, hoping each

time that there would be at least the faintest spark of

attraction.

But there hadn’t been.

Breathing out roughly, she trailed her fingers over

the banister of the stairs as she moved to the the

master suite.

The room that somehow hadn’t had even the

faintest mark of her parents on it when she had

bought it.

She’d redecorated after buying the house from

her parents anyway.

She almost smiled at the thought of that

purchase. Her father had actually priced the house at

the highest appraisal given, and that was the price

she had had to pay for it. At twenty two, that hadn’t

been easy.

Thankfully, tourism hadn’t really kicked off in

Sweetrock yet, so housing prices weren’t as high as

they could have been otherwise. And her uncle had

co-signed

She had bought the house the week after she

had lost their child.

She hadn’t been prepared for such loss, in more

ways than one. When her period had been late, she

had been certain—and she had been wrong.

Perhaps she had made her mistake in

attempting to forget that night and every other time

she had met him or deliberately run into him over the

years until the miscarriage. It hadn’t been hard to

learn where he would be or when until his uncle Clyde

Ramsey had died.

After that, Cami hadn’t heard anything else about

Rafer until his arrival in town more than three years

later.

Reaching the second floor, she turned at the

landing and took the several steps to the suite she’d

completely redecorated. Merging the master

bedroom with the guest room, she’d created a

sanctuary within her home.

All of the rooms, in some ways, were an oasis, a

sanctuary that fulfilled whatever varied mood she

could have without reminding her of her father in any

way.

But tonight, tonight her mood was unlike any she

had had before.

It was interesting.

Stepping into her bedroom, she closed the door

behind her, her hand still gripping the doorknob as

she leaned back against the door. Staring up at the

ceiling, she inhaled slowly, deeply, and blinked back

the tears.

She didn’t want to be here alone—

A shadow moved in the corner of the room.

Quick, fast, like a blur of darkness it barreled toward

her.

“Oh God!” Terror washed through her at the sight,

at the instinctive knowledge of what it was.

Dressed in black from head to toe, a dark hood

pulled over his face, nothing showing but dark,

malevolent eyes.

Screaming, Cami jerked open the door and

raced out of it, thanking God she had taken off the

high heels, as she tore down the stairs to the front

door and the security alarm control.

She knew she didn’t have a chance of releasing

the locks before her attacker caught her. She couldn’t

chance the back door, where there was no alarm

control.

She was just there. Her hand slapped it, her

fingers reaching for the panic button, when a hard,

violent blow was delivered to the side of her head.

Her cheek slammed into the wall. Bells seemed

to clamor in her head as her stomach pitched

sickeningly with the pain and dizziness that suddenly

attacked her.

Vicious, hard fingers suddenly caught at her hair,

jerking her back and throwing her into the stairs. As

though in slow motion, she felt herself hurtling across

the space, unable to stop the fall she knew was

coming.

She caught herself against the banister as she

stumbled back, hitting a step with her hip as her head

cracked against the banister railing. For a second,

dizziness washed over her as a wave of raw pain

swept through her head again.

Another blow cracked the side of her face.

His fist?

The agony was like nothing she had ever known

before. It resounded through her skull, sliced through

her brain, and seemed to rip her senses from their

moorings. She was trying to scream, but she didn’t

know if she was. The wailing clash of sound in her

head was so loud.

“You fucking whore!” Snarling, furious, the harsh

male voice cracked around her a second before he

jerked her up by the hair on her head.

Her hands pulled his wrists, her nails digging at

them, searching for bare flesh as she fought to be

free.

A second later he threw her against the door as

she screamed again, her fingers curling into claws as

she aimed for his face.

She was inches from his eyes when harsh hands

grabbed her wrists, jerked them over her head, and

ripped her gown down the front.

Bucking, her screams mixing with the piercing

wail of the siren echoing through the head, Cami

fought desperately to be free. Hard, cruel fingers

wrapped around the mound of one breast, squeezing

harshly as she felt the screaming pain of merciless

fingers twisting her nipple.

“I’ll fuck you first, then cut your fucking throat like I

should have cut your diseased sister’s.”

Low, vicious laughter sounded at Cami’s ear as

she fought, kicking, screaming, until finally her knee

struck its target and slammed into the vulnerable balls

between his thighs as he moved to shift his weight.

The high, piercing cry tore from him. His suddenly

lax grip gave her the chance she needed to throw

herself away from him, reaching for the umbrella

holder and jerking one of the folded instruments from

the opening.

As a weapon it was pitiful, but her dazed mind

could only comprehend the point, the curved handle,

and the distance it would put between her and her

attacker.

She whirled around in just enough time to see the

front door jerking open and the black-clad figure