No Longer Mine (21 page)

The accident report. He shouldn’t have had an acquaintance in the police department track it down. It had almost lessened his resolve. It had been frank, brutal, frightening. Truck overturned twice, tumbled down a thirty-foot embankment. Snapped a little boy’s neck and nearly blinded his mother. Both Nikki and Shawn had worn their seatbelts and Jason had been secured in his seat. None of that had mattered—the boy had died and the fact that Nikki and Shawn had survived was nothing short of a miracle.

Wade refused to think about that piece of paper. It was just words strung together. He didn’t think about it or about what he was doing.

He wasn’t sleeping much, but that was fine. When he slept, it gave his conscience a chance to argue with the less rational part of his mind. Plus, it gave his imagination plenty of time to cook up dreams that starred Nikki and some nameless, faceless fuck who’d planted a child in her and then walked away.

No, he was better off without sleeping.

Anger had a fuel all its own.

114

www.samhainpublishing.com

Chapter Sixteen

The house was silent save for the faint electronic hum of her computer.

She really needed to be working. She had revisions waiting. She had another book waiting and more email than she even wanted to think about. There was a slew of file-sharing sites she needed to deal with, but that task was more than she could handle just now.

The ache in her heart made working almost impossible.

There were some who seemed to think authors, artists and the like thrived on misery, but Nikki was realizing she wasn’t one of them. She’d found solace in her writing when she’d lost Jason, but that wasn’t happening this time around.

There was no solace.

The only thing that helped was keeping her mind blank. Carefully blank.

She was tired, exhausted-clear-to-the-bone tired, weak, bleary-minded tired. Her muscles ached from a two-hour wood chopping stint the day before. And the day before that she had ridden her bike over the cold, winding roads for several hours. Her face was chapped from the biting wind and it had taken hours to feel warm again.

The wood pile outside her house was unbelievably large. Nikki was stocked in enough wood to last through several winters. She had put more miles in on her bike the past four weeks than she normally did all summer.

Wade and Leanne. Together.

The night in the parking lot of Tonito’s loomed large in her mind at the worst times.

Nikki forced herself to get up and walk into the kitchen. Conscious of the wisdom in Kirsten’s words, she made herself eat a good meal at least once a day, even if she didn’t want it. Though she had gained another four pounds, Nikki was aware she was still too thin. She’d been to see her doctor and he’d been so aggravated with her she wouldn’t be surprised if he had found a picture of her to throw darts at once she was out of the office.

She was now on a high-calorie, high-protein diet. And that damned doctor had told her if she didn’t put on at least a pound every week over the next month, he was putting her on a liquid dietary supplement.

Nikki’s lip curled at the thought. No way was she drinking that crap.

So she ate the damned food. And hated every tasteless bite.

Shiloh Walker

Later, as the sun rose to its zenith, shining down a thin, watery winter light, she sat at the table, staring outside without seeing anything, eating a sandwich piled high with ham and tomatoes. She ate the chili her dad had made and sent home with her.

It all tasted like sawdust to her. It had for weeks. Months.

Wade hadn’t called. Hadn’t spoken to her the one time she had seen him in the store. Not that this was a bad thing. Nikki wasn’t sure she could handle it. She was far too fragile. Seeing him with another woman had hurt her even more than she expected. Part of her insisted once she recovered from the shock of that she would do what she had come home to do.

But another part knew that if she approached him and he rebuffed her, it would destroy her stubborn determination to keep going. She knew she wasn’t as strong as Kirsten said she was. She would, once again, lose the will to live. And she wouldn’t have Jason to keep her going.

If for no other reason than just sheer stubbornness, Nikki didn’t want to just fade away again. Maybe the pain would go away, but then again, so would she. She had never been a quitter, and she didn’t want to start now.

But something would have to give, and soon. She couldn’t keep going on in this limbo forever.

116

www.samhainpublishing.com

Chapter Seventeen

Nikki’s black SUV came to an abrupt halt when she took the final curve to her house. Wade’s truck sat blocking the road, and he was leaning against the hood, hands buried in the pockets of a beat-up leather jacket—one she had bought their second Christmas together.

He still has it.

Blinking away the tears, Nikki shifted the SUV into park and rolled the window down as Wade approached. She had been home nearly six weeks and this was the closest she had been to him since that awful day late last summer.

The cold wind blew through the window, whipping her hair, stinging her eyes. It was blocked when Wade leaned against the door, propping his elbows in the window frame. He was silent for a long time, studying her.

“Hey,” Wade said quietly. The words he had rehearsed left him when he got his first good look at her.

Dear Lord. She looks like a war refugee.
She was thin, unbelievably so. Her cheeks were hollow and the hands that gripped the steering wheel were pale and fragile looking. Her eyes looked unnaturally dark in her wan face.

Sourly, Wade decided her high society boyfriend in New York must like his woman scrawny.

Angry as he was, it wasn’t as hard as he would have liked to make his voice sound hesitant and uncertain. Pleading. “Nikki.” He cursed himself when his voice faltered of its own accord. His throat was tight as he said, “How…how’ve you been?”

“Well enough,” Nikki replied. Wade didn’t like just how easy, how steady her voice was. How could she sound normal when he was a mass of fury and pain inside? “You?”

“Awful,” he said bluntly, hating that it was true. Hated that just seeing her made his wounded heart feel better.

“Is there—”

“Will you—”

They both spoke at once, then fell silent.

“You first,” she offered. A slight smile edging up the corners of her mouth.

Wade took the chance, not wanting to give her opening to slip up the hill, into her house, away from him where she could lock the rest of the world out and remain hidden in her fortress. He steeled himself
Shiloh Walker

and reminded himself he had a job to do. Something that had to be done before he could get on with his life.

“I want to talk with you. Can you come for a ride with me?” he asked. Half of him shouted,
Say yes!

The other half begged,
Say no. Don’t let me do this to you.

Nikki shrugged and looked away. “You’re welcome to come on up,” she said, reaching for the gear shift.

“I’d rather you come with me. I…” Letting his voice trail off, he gazed at her with hot eyes. “I really don’t need to be alone in that house with you, Nik. Not just yet.” He didn’t tell her he didn’t want to be in that house. A house where she had raised her son. A house where she might have welcomed her son’s father, her lover. A house where he had never been welcomed.

Blood rushed to her face as he stared at her, and he could all but feel the heat that was rushing through her body as she shifted on the sheet. She was going to refuse. Wade could see it in her eyes. Telling himself he had to convince her, he gave in to the urge to touch her, just brush his hand across her cheek. He was just trying to get her to go with him. That was all. If he satisfied this crazy urge to touch her, so what?

So soft
, he wondered.
So cool, silky.
“Please,” he implored, willing to beg if that was what it took.

Her eyes widened before flickering shut. Without moving, she seemed to arch closer against his feather-light caress. And then as if somebody had turned off a light, she shut down, locked herself back in.

“All right,” she said quietly. “I can’t be gone long though. I’ve got a lot to get done.” He backed away without answering. “I’ll follow you up,” he said softly. And then he turned on his heel.

Soon. In a few more days she would be out of his life. And hopefully out of his heart.

He certainly would not be in hers. She was going to hate him, very shortly.

The very thought twisted his guts, tightened his throat until he could barely breathe. Scowling, he reminded himself it didn’t matter if she hated him.

But he knew he was lying.

He frowned as she climbed out of the Explorer. His eyes locked on her slight figure, clearly outlined by navy jeans. Why in the hell had she lost so much weight? Whoever he was—and Wade had no doubt that there was a he—he must like his woman all skin and bone.

Wade couldn’t help but wonder if it was the father of the baby. Maybe she had been in New York with him all this time. Maybe…

With a growl, Wade stopped that thought before it could fully form. Nikki had come to a halt outside his truck and was eyeing him uncertainly. Her purse was slung over one shoulder, hands tucked into the pockets of her trench coat. Wade forced a smile that felt as though it would crack his face as he swung out of the truck.

She moved slowly, tiredly. Probably wasn’t eating enough to keep a bird alive.

118

www.samhainpublishing.com

No Longer Mine

Well, her appetite would be roused over the next few days. He would take her to bed until she couldn’t take him any more. He intended to mark her, brand her as his, so that for the rest of her life, she would never be able to look at another man for want of him.

He would use that sleek body until he had her out of his system.

And then he was going to walk away.

Nikki eyed Wade, her uneasiness growing by leaps and bounds. It had merely been a seed when she had climbed into the truck. Wade wouldn’t hurt her physically and she had taken everything else he had dished out. She would be fine.

But they had been driving for well over two hours. And Wade hadn’t made a single sound other than a noncommittal grunt from time to time. As the highway sped on by, she forced herself to speak. “Wade,” she said, striving for a light tone. “I know you are a man of few words, but this is a record even for you.

How are we supposed to talk when you won’t even open your mouth?” Wade merely sent a sidelong look she couldn’t decipher and drove on.

“Wade, what’s going on?” she asked flatly, crossing her arms over her chest as he turned off the main highway onto a side road.

“I figured we needed to clear the air,” he finally said.

Minutes passed and he said nothing else, so Nikki sighed and again spoke. “Is there some reason we can’t do that in Monticello?” she prodded.

By now they were on a road that was little more than a gravel path and he didn’t take his eyes off of her as he drove on. “I didn’t want to do it in your house. Too easy for you to kick me out there,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

He fell back into silence without another word. But there was something in his eyes that bothered her, something that had her belly drawn into a tight knot, something that got tighter with every mile that passed.

Silent, she stared out the window as he followed that country road, taking another one that spiraled upward.

They were in the mountains now. Through the occasional break in trees she could see the Smokies soaring into the sky, their peaks shrouded by low-hanging clouds.

Stifling a shiver, she leaned back in the seat, wishing she had listened to her gut when it had insisted she not go with him.

And fighting off the fear that she really hadn’t had a choice.

Out of the corner of his eye nearly an hour later, Wade watched her shift in the seat. Her face had become paler and paler as they drove farther. They hadn’t seen a car in nearly two hours. This rutted dirt road would eventually end some twenty miles ahead, if he was going the right way.

If she sat up much straighter, her spine was going to crack from the strain and she was as pale as death. Scared. Sighing, he edged his truck as far off the narrow road as he could. Scaring her wasn’t what

www.samhainpublishing.com

119

Shiloh Walker

he wanted. He wanted some payback for all the guilt she’d laid on him, and he wanted to prove to himself he could get her out of his system…and shit, he just plain wanted her, a few days with her. But no, he didn’t want to scare her.

As he turned to face her, he turned up the heat. It was twenty degrees out and the nearest town was more than seventy miles back. One thing was certain, she was stuck with him until he decided otherwise.

With one arm draped across the steering wheel, the other across the back of the bench seat, he looked at her. Again, it struck him how wan she looked. She looked weak, fragile. In all the time he had known her she had never looked like that. He hadn’t thought she could look like that.

But she did. She looked as though a breeze would knock her down. The emptiness in her eyes pulled at his heart and the words seemed pulled from there as he whispered, “Damnation, I’ve missed you.” Startled, Nikki turned her head to look at him. Her wary eyes skittered away and she shrugged as she said softly, “I don’t know why. You said yourself you were tired of waiting around for me.” It wasn’t as hard as it should have been to summon up a sheepish, sorry look. “We need to talk about that,” he muttered. Reaching out, he trailed his finger down her cheek before hooking the back of her neck and drawing her closer. He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent.

That unforgettable scent drew him, lured him closer, tempted and taunted him. He counted to ten, then twenty as he reached for control.

He buried his face against her neck, basking in her warmth, softness. Control never seemed further away. “But we’ll talk later,” he muttered and dragged her across the seat to drape awkwardly across his lap.