“But it’s fine to ask me because I’m just a whore.” Bitterness dripped from Elaine’s mouth. Her eyes narrowed even as Christian caressed her hair. “I like Hope. I actually feel guilty about bringing her here. I should have left her in that bus station.”
Christian’s hands tightened on her hair. “For the vermin of the world to devour?”
Elaine hissed a little as Christian’s hands tightened. “Well, better vermin than a snake. She’s going to find out about you. She’s going to find out about the theft and the scams. What are you going to tell her when we shut everything down in a year or two? We always have to. We’ll get close to getting caught, and we’ll pull up stakes. What are you going to tell Hope when we have to flee the authorities?”
Christian’s lips curved in a humorless smile. “She’s a good girl. She’ll do what I tell her to do.”
Because she always had. Like she’d always obeyed her mother, right up to the moment she’d told her to get out.
Christian wasn’t some white knight.
“What is she going to do when the feds come in? And eventually they are going to come in, Christian. This is a good setup, the best you’ve ever run, but can’t you see you’re skirting disaster? You’re getting too much publicity and you’re buying way too much into your own cover. Hope isn’t good for you. She’s a sweet girl and all, but you’re obsessed with her. It’s going to cost us all.”
Christian’s eyes grew cold though Elaine wasn’t looking into them. She was staring at his chest, her hand possessively on his arm.
“Leave Hope out of this. She’s mine, and it’s going to stay that way. I’ll take care of the authorities. You know how this works. We’ll close up this operation if it gets too hot. It’s already netted several million. I can’t get out of here just yet. I made a deal with certain people to get them information.”
“I know what Jerry does. I’m not stupid. He’s fleecing people out of credit card numbers, and you’re selling them to the fucking mob. Hope will love that.”
Hope didn’t love anything about this conversation. Rage was churning in her gut. Used. She’d been so used. Her anger was directed at anyone and everyone, including herself. How long had Christian and Elaine been partners? She wasn’t sure who she was more angry at, Christian for being a duplicitous snake, or Elaine for making her think she was Hope’s friend. Or herself for being the idiot who believed it all.
“And what about all these followers, Christian?” Elaine asked. “Some of them know too much.”
Christian stepped back and shrugged as he opened a drawer of his desk. “I have a list of people to get rid of when we leave town. We’ve been careful. Most of the idiots on the farm don’t have anyone looking for them. When they disappear, no one will care.”
“Yes, I believe that’s why we selected Hope.”
“And if I have to dispose of my wife, I will.” Christian’s cold words broke through Hope’s anger. He would kill her. God, he was talking about killing all of her friends. He couldn’t really do that. He wouldn’t do that. No way. Christian might be a criminal, but he wasn’t a killer. She had to know him well enough to know he wasn’t a killer. She had to.
He walked back to Elaine with a deep sigh.
Hope stood there unable to move. She needed to get away, but she couldn’t force her feet to work. She felt frozen, as though she had to see this scene play out or it wouldn’t be real to her. Christian had one hand at his side, but the other came out to caress Elaine’s cheek. A sweet gesture he’d performed for Hope a million times.
“I will handle everything, El. I always do. I always clean up my loose ends. You should know that by now.”
He turned her in his arms, her back to his chest. Elaine’s eyes closed, and a dreamy look came over her face.
“I love you, Christian. I’ve loved you so much longer than that stupid twit. Let’s get rid of her and take the money and run.” Elaine’s hand disappeared around Christian’s backside.
Christian’s hands tightened, and his left arm came up. A flash of silver caught Hope’s eye, and Christian pulled a knife across his mistress’s throat. Her white neck split, gaping open before a waterfall of life began to gush from her.
There was a terrible gagging sound and then a thump as Elaine hit the floor.
A scream curdled inside Hope. She swallowed it down, backing up until she couldn’t see anymore.
“Yeah, it’s Chris. Jerry, I don’t give a fuck about that. I just killed Elaine. Because the bitch was going to tell my wife everything. I can’t have that. Get someone here to clean up. Now. Bitch bled all over my rug.”
Hope’s hands were shaking as she backed up, desperate to not make a sound. He couldn’t find her. She would go the same way Elaine had. Tears made the world a watery mess as she hurried down the hall and back out into the night. She was supposed to be at a friend’s house, but she’d walked back up the hill to get her sweater. She ignored the cool air and braced herself.
She hid behind a shed as Jerry and his men walked by. There were three of them. Men who had laughed with her, worked with her. Men who claimed to be her friends. They were going to clean up after Christian’s crime. They would dispose of Elaine’s body, and then come tomorrow they would smile and laugh with her again.
All lies.
When she was alone, she calmed, forcing a placid smile on her face. Hope walked back to her friend’s house, wondering all the while if the devil she’d married was watching her, planning her own death.
Chapter Fifteen
Hope forced herself back to reality. She could almost feel the Atlanta night around her, but she was here in Bliss. She wasn’t the same girl Christian had fooled. Not by half.
“Let me get this straight,” James began. Hope finally turned to look at him, and sure enough, there was anger on his face. “You watched him kill someone, and then you went back to him?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Hope sniffled, trying hard not to cry. She’d expected his anger. Noah was just sitting and listening, but he hadn’t moved from the couch. He wasn’t jumping up to hold her. They were in their corners, and she was in hers. “If I had left, he would have searched for me. I had planned to gather some money and go to the police, but something happened that night.”
“Did you kill him?” Noah asked, his voice steady and even.
Hope swallowed before answering, the affirmation of her crime stuck in her throat. “Yes. I tried. I suppose it was more of a case of I didn’t try to save him. It was chilly that night, and Christian couldn’t stand the cold. He also had trouble sleeping. He’d taken a pill when he came to bed.”
“You fucking slept with him again?” The question tore from James’s mouth.
James’s vitriol was going to be worse than Christian’s. She forced herself not to cry. “No. I claimed my period was coming. Christian wouldn’t touch me when that happened. He went to sleep after turning on the space heater. I got up in the night and got dressed. I stole money from the safe after I found the code. My birthday. As I was leaving, I stumbled over the heater. It was so dark. I was terrified, but Christian didn’t stir. Not even when the curtains caught fire.”
She’d watched them light up. The frail, filmy curtains had caught fire quickly, orange-and-red flames blooming and bouncing around. It had been like a dance. She’d thought for a moment that she should stay and watch. The world had been so cruel.
But something stronger had taken over. The world had been cruel because she’d allowed it.
“I walked out. I didn’t wake Christian. I just walked away and didn’t look back. I took the car and exchanged it for another one outside of Little Rock. And then I wandered for years until I came here.”
“What did you do with the money, Hope?” Noah asked.
James had gotten up. He started to pace, his hands on his hips.
God, she didn’t want to get into this, but she’d promised honesty. Trev’s words came back to her. He’d been right, of course. Words had powe
r and holding the story deep inside herself had taken her to the brink this time. The only way to get herself back was to tell the truth, to let the poison out even though it would cost her their love. She’d never really had it in the first place. They hadn’t known her.
“I drank most of it. I stayed in motels and I drank because it seemed like a good thing to do. I had never had so much as a glass of wine until the night after I left Christian. I was only twenty, but I managed to get into a bar and some man bought me a drink and then two, and then I wasn’t seeing Elaine anymore. I wasn’t seeing Christian. I woke up the next morning in a strange bed, and I ran to the next town.”
“Fuck all, Hope, do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” James asked, his eyes narrowed.
She shrugged. James, it seemed, was beginning to get the picture. “I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I thought the cops would find me. I thought Jerry might figure out how much money I had taken and come after me. But mostly I just wanted to erase that picture in my head. I wanted to erase me.”
“You know Trev from AA, don’t you?” Noah asked. He seemed calmer than James, but then distance could do that. Hope decided Noah was doing the right thing. He was distancing.
“I only just met him, but he’s been very kind to me. He’s right about what he said. I needed this. Honesty is the only way to stay sane. And it’s the only way to live. You needed to know this. I spent years trying to find a way to eradicate myself. I used alcohol and sex to do it. Nate found me one night. I’d passed out in my car. He brought me home, and he and Callie and Zane sobered me up and got me to a meeting. Nate knows about Christian. Zane and Callie know, too, though I avoided talking about all the sex stuff. I couldn’t be innocent anymore. It was stupid, but I wanted to obliterate the idiot girl who married a monster and didn’t even know it.”
A silence fell over the room, and Hope swallowed down her misery. She’d told them. She’d done it, and there was a certain peace that came with it. The worst was over. She was prepared for their reactions. They would stumble over words and try not to look her in the eyes. They would be gentle, because they were good men, but they would ease her out of their lives.
And she would make it easy on them because she loved them. If she could go back and change things, she would. She would have made all the right choices to bring her here to this place in the right way, but she couldn’t. The past had caught her, and she was done.
She took a deep breath and tried her damnedest to look calm. “So, if you don’t mind, I should probably get back to the station. If this really is Christian, I need to talk to Nate about what to do next.”
James walked straight up to her. He took her shoulders in both hands and shook her lightly. “You are never leaving this ranch again, do you understand me? After that story, if you think I will allow you to step one foot off our land, you’re insane.”
“James.” She couldn’t let him do this. “I need to get on with my life, and you and Noah need to move on with yours.”
“What are you talking about?” He didn’t release her, but he turned back to his brother. “Noah, what the hell is wrong with her?”
Noah stood, a deeply sad look in his eyes. “Guilt.”
“About what?” James asked.
Had he not listened? “Everything, James. Did you hear a word I said? I was willfully ignorant. I can look back now and see all the signs. They were there, but I didn’t want to see them. I wanted the world to be sugarcoated, and Elaine died because of it. Whatever she did, she didn’t deserve to die. I left Christian to die. I didn’t even think about getting him out. I took that money. It was blood money, and I still took it. I didn’t go to the cops. I can’t even tell you about the years before I came to Bliss because they were a blur of alcohol. I’m everything Christian didn’t want me to be. I’m a slut and an alcoholic and, in the end, I’m a coward because I never stood up.”
James turned back to her, his fingers tightening. There was a tic in his jaw, and then she saw it. A single tear balancing on his eyelashes. “I ever hear you talk that way again, and that spanking you got earlier will feel like paradise. I will tear you up. You listen to me and you listen good. There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.”
“I slept around.” She had to make him understand.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.” Softer this time, but just as insistent.
“I’m an alcoholic.” She was breaking under his gaze. She’d held up when she’d been sure he would turn from her, but seven little words were finding the cracks in the walls she’d built. Seven words were splitting her open and exposing her.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.” Noah came behind her, his body crowding her, his hand in her hair.
“Don’t you say it.” It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. After everything she’d done, everything that had happened. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let it happen. She didn’t deserve it. Forgiveness. She didn’t deserve it.
James pulled her close. The anger had fled his tone in favor of a loving, peaceful sigh. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you, Hope.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, love.” Noah whispered the words against her ear.
And she was broken. The flood that had been dammed for years, that she had bottled up and fought against with only self-loathing and alcohol as her weapons, escaped like a cork popping open after years of tension. Horror flooded her, and she saw it all again. Felt it again. But she could cry this time. She could scream when before she’d been silent. It came out of her in a long wail, and they held her, surrounding her with safety.
She cried for the child she’d been, for the woman she was, for the person she could never be. She screamed for the injustices she’d seen. She let it out, her voice ringing through the room. Tears poured out, and they said it over and over again.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.”
They said it, taking turns. They whispered it and spoke it out loud, and slowly it began to seep in, their words forming a promise she had never been able to make.
She was strong. She would survive. She was worthy.
They followed her to the floor when her legs gave way, never leaving her for an instant. She cried until she had nothing left, and she was empty.
So how was it that she felt so very full?
She sagged against James, his strength a welcome anchor now that the storm had passed. Noah leaned against her. The room was quiet, only the sound of their mingled breaths disturbing the silence. She closed her eyes and savored the sweetness of the moment.
“You’re still here.”
“I’m not going anywhere, baby.” James tenderly forced her head up. “I told you, we’re getting married. Now the way I understand it, you’re not legally attached to this dickwad, but I think Noah and I should make damn sure he understands that you’re divorced.”
“Permanently,” Noah added, his hand sliding over her hip.
She shook her head, still shocked at the outcome. “I don’t understand you.”
“That’s funny, darlin’,” Noah said. “Because I understand you.”
“Explain it to me, brother.” James sounded so calm, his breath easing in and out of his chest. “I would ask Hope, but I think I would get pissed off at the answer.”
“More than likely,” Noah replied. “You can’t understand, Jamie. You’ve never done anything that genuinely hurt someone, not even yourself.”
“Hell, I ain’t perfect.”
Noah laughed. “Not even close, but you’ve always done your duty. You even did it for a snot-nosed brother who doesn’t share an ounce of blood and who left you behind.”
“We’re past that,” James said firmly.
“See. You forgive so easily. But it’s harder to forgive yourself. Think about it, Jamie. What would have happened if I had stayed in town, if I had been Bliss’s vet? What would have happened the minute she walked into Stella’s? Did you know you wanted her?
”
James’s hands stroked her hair. “Hell, yeah. I knew.”
“And you stayed away for a year because you had nothing to give her. You wouldn’t have felt that way if I had been there.” Noah’s voice dripped with regret.
A deep sigh came from James. “The ranch would have still needed work. The fire would have still happened. We still would have needed money.”
“But you would have trusted that between the two of us, we could give her what she needed.” Noah leaned against her. “A year gone. We would have gotten married by now. She would be pregnant. We would have a family. And we don’t because I got it in my head that I could finally get something you didn’t have only to find out that it didn’t mean shit because you weren’t there to share it with me.”
Hope smiled. “You two are taking a lot for granted. Maybe I would have played hard to get.”
A light joy threatened to take her. They were still here. She’d told them the worst, let them see the depths of where she’d sunk, and they held her. They were talking about a family. They had seen her worst and loved her anyway.
James’s smile turned distinctly wolflike. “Hard to get? I doubt it. I remember the way your pretty face flushed the minute you saw me. You wanted me. Now it might have taken longer because you would have known you had to take Noah’s ugly mug along with mine. I got all the looks.”
“Asshole.” Noah laughed.
James stood up and offered her a hand. “Come with us, baby. We want to show you just how little we care about your past beyond the fact that we love the woman you are now. You made one mistake. I forgive you for it, but we need to talk about it so you never make it again.”
She nodded, willing to listen to anything he had to say.
Noah took over. “You should have made damn sure the fucker was dead. Next time shoot him, darlin’. Don’t leave things to chance.”