Edge of fear, p.32
Edge Of Fear, page 32
“Nairne’s Curse has been in force for five hundred years. It is what it is. And completely irrelevant in this case.”
“Oh, I think it’s very relevant at the moment. I’m your Lifemate.”
Caleb’s blood ran cold as the word spilled so easily from her lips. “No,” he said flatly. “You’re not.” He’d almost lost her once because he’d refused to acknowledge his feelings. He’d thought that by not acknowledging who and what she was to him, she’d be immune. Wrong. He’d been given a reprieve, that was all. It was as if Nairne had given him a warning.
Do not fall in love.
Duty.
Duty or death.
He shuddered, the pain ripping through his body. He was damned if he’d put her at risk like that again. He’d rather have his beating heart ripped out and fed to dogs than see her hurt again.
She gnawed the corner of her lip and frowned. “Are you saying you don’t love me?”
The smell of her skin was making his brain turn to mush. Damn it. He should move away. “I didn’t say that.”
“So. You do love me.”
“Immaterial.” His heart was a block of ice beneath her palm, which still rested against his chest. “I have nothing to offer you. Not a damn thing. I can’t give you a traditional marriage. I won’t live with you. Ever. You and Bean will be well taken care of. Both physically and financially. But I can’t,won’t be a part of your life. Not going to happen.”
“Because of the Curse?”
If he told her yes, she’d try to buck it. If he told her no, she’d try to squeeze an admission out of him.
“If nothing else,” Caleb said carefully, “Nairne’s Curse is as real as death and taxes. Countless ancestors have given breaking it their best shot. It just flat out doesn’t work.Generations of Edges have tried and failed. Fortunately, that doesn’t come into play here.” He kept his tone bored and slightly impatient. “To be brutally honest, you were nothing more than a means to an end. That’s all.”
She blinked at the strike, then lifted her hand off him. Caleb immediately felt the lack of heat.
“That doesn’t leave room for interpretation, does it? I—My life has been on hold for long enough,” she said with a wobble in her voice. “I want to be settled,feel settled before our son is born. I didn’t realize until I wasn’t living it anymore that my life in Paris didn’t quite fit me. But neither does living in a one-room apartment here in San Francisco. I want less of what I had before, but more than this.”
She cocked her head to one side, as if she was actually consulting him. He knew better.
“I have to find some sort of middle ground. With or without you. I’ve been on pause. Now I want to hit ‘play’ and get my life back on track.”
“That’s your prerogative.” He felt feral. Why wasn’t she trying to make him stay? Agreeing to be miserable, just like he would be miserable without her in his life, every single day? It really ticked him off that she was so calm and collected. And that she was making him doubt his decisions. Decisions that he’d made years ago. All three of his brothers had, for Christ’s sake! Informed decisions that had always,always made perfect sense. Marriage and love equaled death to the Lifemate—therefore, no freaking Lifemate. Simple.
He wasn’t exactly taking this lightly. Five hundred years of Edridges and Edges had been foolish enough to thinkthey could break the Curse.
Forget himself. His wants.
His son would need his mother.
The decisions he’d had to make were forher safety and happiness. He was choking on his martyrdom, God damn it. “I think you should do just that,” he said through his teeth.
“Thank you. But I don’t need your blessing, Caleb. I’m going to be a mother. That’s putting the cart before the horse, but if you don’t want me, then it’s time I put myself out there to see if there’s someone else whodoes. ”
“What?” He wanted her. He wanted her as badly now as, hell, more so, than he had the second he’d first set eyes on her. But she was already thinking about another man?
He gulped, feeling the sweat on his brow as she waited for him to say something coherent. Why should both of them have to hurt? Heather wasn’t Cursed.He was Cursed.
His problem. Not hers.
He didn’t want her to know just how hard this was for him.
Point was, he reminded himself savagely, she didn’thave to know.
She’d get over him. Fuck, she practically already had.
Caleb was afraidhe wasn’t going to be so damned lucky.
His life had been exactly the way he liked it. BH—Before Heather. It could be that way again. It would require due diligence. But his life could and would be back to normal. Soon.
Maybe.
“I will of course assume all financial responsibility for both of you.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and she went very still. “We don’t need your financialresponsibility. I’m loaded, remember?”
“Nevertheless—”
She lifted her chin and stepped back, her eyes unnaturally bright. Caleb wished he didn’t know her well enough to recognize that she was struggling to control her emotions. “I will of course contact an attorney right away.”
“You won’t need an attorney to enforce my responsibilities, Heather. I’ve already told you—”
Her eyes met his. “To file for my divorce.”
“Div—? Not just no. Buthell no!” He rubbed the pain piercing his chest near his heart. “No divorce.”
“That’s extremely disagreeable and unfair of you,” she said hotly. “You don’t want me, and nobody else can have me either?”
Disagreeable and unfair or not. “Yes.” That was exactly it.
“We’ll see about that. Bean, let Daddy out of the freaking chair, please.” He felt the invisible bonds break.
“You’ll be able to see Bean whenever you want.” Sorrow and regret surfaced through her annoyance, darkening her eyes to amber.
“Thank you. That’s generous of you. I’d still like you to consider moving to Montana and living at Edridge Castle until we’re sure we have all the bad guys rounded up. It would mean a lot to me to know you and our child will be safe and well cared for.” He sounded as formal as MacBain.
“We’d be safe and well cared for if we were withyou, ” she pointed out in an achingly soft voice. Not pleading. Simple, unadorned fact.
She walked toward him, walked into his arms, making every nerve and muscle in his body clench hard and tight. “Hold me one last time, okay?” She slipped her arms tightly around his waist and buried her face against his chest, then just stood there, her body pressed against his, her breath hot through his shirt.
Heather. The aching loss he felt almost knocked him to his knees. He’d hold her this last time. Store up the memory. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. Inhaled the summer fragrance of Heather. His chest hurt so bad he almost cried out.
One more minute. Okay. As long as she’d allow the embrace. Then he’d go…
He felt her body shudder in his arms, then she looked up at him, touching his jaw with cool fingers. “Will you look me in the eye and tell me you honestly don’t love me? I meant what I said. I can, I will, take care of myself and Bean. If you just say those words, then I’ll let you go without a fight.”
“I fight for a living.”
“I don’t have training and I don’t have any special skills, but I love you, Caleb.”
She wielded theL word as expertly as his brother Gabriel wielded his sword. And with as much accuracy. It pierced Caleb deeply, and cut as sharply as that claymore. She had weapons and skills that he envied.
She stood on her toes, cupping his jaw as she brought her mouth up to his. “Kiss me good-bye then.”
He slid his hand around her throat to her nape, then up into her hair. “Don’t try to beat me at this,” he murmured against her damp mouth. “I’ll never change my mind.”
Never was a long fucking bleak time. He wasn’t sure he could survive it.
She slid her hands down his chest, then slipped her arms around to circle his waist. She pressed both palms against the small of his back, urging him closer. “Never is a very long time.” She repeated his very thought.
A shiver of raw lust surged through him, pulsing through his veins like a primitive jungle beat. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wouldnever want a woman as he did this one. Knew unequivocally that he would neverlove a woman as much as he loved Heather.
Yeah. All that.
And he wasstill going to let her believe that she’d meant nothing to him. That walking away was one of the easiest things he’d ever done.
His fingers fisted in her hair when she opened her mouth to welcome him, her tongue teasing and taunting his. Damn it. A mere kiss he could have dealt with. Teeth and tongue and lips. But Heather, being Heather, had to play dirty. She tempted him with subliminal promises, tormented him with her beautiful, loving heart. Made him believe,almost, in happy endings.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, already feeling bereft and alone. It was going to get a lot worse in the near future. But kissing her, gripping her arms to hold on to her, was not the way he needed to show her that he didn’t care.
That would take every scrap of acting ability he could muster.
He knew her. If she realized there was the tiniest chink in his armor, she’d find a way to crawl inside it to reach him. Then he’d never be able to walk away. Gently Caleb put her away from him. He gave her a cool, ironic look. “Thank God we don’t have to be in love to be compatible in bed. How about one more for the road?”
Instead of being annoyed, she smiled. “I really would like to make love with you one last time. But unfortunately I don’t think you could handle it.”
Oh, yeah. She had weapons.
He wanted her with a fierce aching need that threatened to bring him to his knees. Yeah. To the lovemaking. But damn it, he wantedher. All of her. He knew that she knew it, too.
“You’d better leave now. I’m going to grab a cab out to the airport and try to get on the next flight to Paris. If I can’t, I can always ask Bean to teleport us there.” She ran both hands through her hair as she walked to the closet and her suitcase.
“At any rate, I have to settle my parents’ estate and decide what I want to do, where I want to live,” she told him conversationally, as if he’d responded. “I’d like to establish a home before Bean is born.”
She was already separating from him. Caleb couldn’t understand why something he needed to have happen, something he wanted to happen—Heather being okay with them going their separate ways—should make him feel as though she’d stuck her hand inside his chest and ripped out his heart.
Be careful what you wish for.
“That’s not for more than five months,” he pointed out, dying a little inside to realize that she would be making all these choices, all these decisions for herself and Bean, by herself. Without him.
“I’ve got a lot to do.” She gave him a bright, careless smile, but her hazel-green eyes were stark with emotion. “Do you need to call a cab or something?” she asked politely.
“No.” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hair felt like silk, her skin was soft and warm. His fingers curved around the shell of her ear, brushed the place on her neck that always made her shiver.
She moved out of reach. “Don’t.”
Throat impossibly tight, he knew that he hadn’t touched her enough. Hadn’t stored up sufficient memories to last him the next fifty years.
Damn it. He hadn’t left her yet and already he missed her.
How the hell,Caleb thought, bleeding inside,how the hell had someone he hadn’t known existed three months ago become his entire world?
“I have Gabriel’s address and phone number,” she said too brightly. “And Duncan’s. And Lark’s—”
“And mine if you need me.”
“I won’t. Really. If this is the way you want it, then stop sending me mixed signals. The less contact we have with each other the better.” Her voice shook a little. “I love you too much to settle for crumbs when I’m starving for the whole feast,” she told him honestly, her heart in her eyes.
“Your job with T-FLAC is important. The world is a safer place because you take your duty so seriously. I’ll make sure Bean knows that. And I’ll tell him that you loved us. Both of us. I’ll try to explain to him why you believed it best to send us away with a lie. Because it’s a lie of omission when you refuse to admit how denying what we feel is tearing you apart.”
“Jesus, Heather—”
“I’m stuck. What do Ido, Caleb? I love you. But because of a hundreds-of-years-old curse, you refuse to admit that you love me back.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I’ve spent all my life in a love/hate relationship with my father. I always believed that even when he didn’t show it, he genuinely loved me. Yet now I’m not so sure that he gave a damn about me at all. And I’ll never know. I’m pretty sure that he killed my mother, the only person who ever loved me for me. And you”—she looked him dead in the eye—“won’t allow yourself to love me. So I repeat. What do I do?
“As much as my heart is crying out, insisting that I beg you to give us a chance, I’m not going to do it. You know how I feel, and clearly it’s pointless to ask you to admit, even once, howyou really feel, Curse be damned.”
Her eyes, now more green than brown, and as clear as a mountain stream, were focused on him. “I want peace, Caleb. I want love. I want stability. And, damn it, I deserve to have those things. With or without you.”
It took everything in him to look at her without flinching. Everything she felt was right there in her beautiful eyes. Love, sadness, hope, and determination.
Caleb was acutelyaware of her, of the intoxicating fragrance of her skin, of the way her hair brushed her shoulders, and the soft swell of her breasts pushing against her black T-shirt. Every particle of his body knew the sensation of her smooth skin beneath his fingertips, and the feel of her breath against his throat. And every cell in his body mourned the loss.
“Yes,” he said, stripped raw emotionally. “You do.” He would do anything for her. Anything but admit how he felt.
“How can you do what you do, day in and day out, and still be such a damned…coward?”
He shrugged. Dealing with tangos was a cakewalk compared to this.This was the bravest, most selfless act he’d performed in his life. He deserved an Oscarand a fucking Medal of Honor.
She tugged her mother’s bracelet off her wrist and held it out to him. “Here. This is yours now. The numbers to the accounts are engraved inside. We’ll never knowwhy my mother stole the money. I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it was greed, or her way of trying to even the score for the good guys’ side.” Her voice trailed off.
“If you like,” he said gruffly, “after Bean’s born, I’ll take you back. You can ask her why she did what she did.”
Her smile broke his heart. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
He put out his hand to take the bracelet. “Once we secure the funds, I’ll make sure this gets back to y—” The second his fingers joined Heather’s on the cool metal, a blaze of fiery sparks shot out, engulfing them both in a galaxy of brilliant white flame.
“Let. Go.” He tried to tell her, attempting to break free of whatever the hell was happening. Magic wasn’t always a good thing, although this didn’t feel menacing.
He couldn’t release the damn thing. His fingers seemed fused to the still-cool metal of the bracelet while blue-centered white flames licked up their arms and engulfed their entire bodies. His body hair crackled with static electricity, and he watched Heather’s hair dance and halo about her head.
Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t look scared. He found his body drawn against hers as if pulled by a magnet. Between them the bracelet started getting warmer and warmer. Not burning his skin, but heating up to a gleaming molten silver.
In a sudden blinding flare the bracelet disappeared, as if plucked from between their fingers, then quicker than the naked eye, appeared again, this time circling Heather’s wrist. It glowed and pulsed against her skin as if lit from within.
“My God.” Caleb staggered back, still feeling the sparks and zings of the electricity charging through his body. “Are you all right?”
Looking dazed, Heather nodded. Her long hair was still filled with static electricity.
“Was that Bean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
