CLAY YEAGER'S REDEMPTION Page 15

  "You've never been back? To see your friends, or even to see your father?"

  He shook his head. "I couldn't stand their sympathy. Not when I knew I … didn't deserve it. I was still alive. It was Jenny they should have been sorry for, not me. She never had a chance."

  "So your father has not only lost a grandchild, he's lost his son, as well." Clay winced visibly, and Casey chose her next words carefully. "Maybe some of the blame is yours, Clay. But you can never know completely what's going on in somebody else's mind. You couldn't have known how close Linda was when she kept insisting she was all right."

  "I should have known."

  "How? Are you omniscient?"

  "I should have stopped her. Somehow."

  "How? How could you have stopped her? Stayed with her twenty-four hours a day?"

  He gave a weary sigh, as if he'd been through this countless times. She was sure he had been.

  "I don't know. Somehow. I already kept the guns locked up, always had, since Jenny was born. I had even locked up my service weapon, because I was only carrying the smaller one I used undercover. It never … I didn't even realize Linda knew the combination to the gun safe. She never went near it."

  "Then you couldn't have known she would."

  "I should have thought about it." He shook his head. "But even if I had, I'd have worried more about pills. I was a cop, I knew women didn't usually shoot. I never would have thought she'd use a gun. She didn't like them."

  Casey couldn't help wondering if Linda's choice of method hadn't been another way of striking back at the husband she wanted to hurt. For she didn't doubt that that was what it had all been about. Doing it in the garage, where Clay would be sure to find them the moment he arrived, and with his own weapon, was too calculated for her to think it was coincidental.

  "You know," she said quietly, "it probably wouldn't have mattered if you'd taken the guns away, or the car, or every kitchen knife. She'd have found a building to jump off, or a truck to step in front of."

  Clay rubbed at his face, his eyes. "Maybe. In her way, Linda was a determined woman."

  "You didn't put the gun in her hand, and you didn't pull that trigger, Clay."

  "And that makes it all right?" he asked, sarcasm biting deep.

  "No," she said. "Maybe some of the blame is yours. Maybe you did neglect her for your work, maybe she felt she didn't matter enough to you to change."

  "But she never asked!" The words burst from him in a cry of pain and anguish. "She never said a word about feeling that way."

  "That's why you don't get to have all the blame to yourself, Clay. She was a grown-up, an adult woman. She should have talked to you, should have been able to express what she needed. Sulking and waiting for someone else to read your mind about what you want is childish."

  He gave her an odd look. "She … used to say that. That I shouldn't have to ask what was wrong, I should know."

  "Prince Charming Syndrome."

  He blinked. "What?"

  "That's what Aunt Fay used to call it. Women who were convinced there was nothing wrong with their lives that the right man couldn't fix. So rather than get out there and fix it themselves, they wait for the prince to come along and do it for them. The prince who would naturally know just what to do without them having to say a word."

  His eyes went unfocused for a moment, as if he were again looking back over the years to that long-ago time. "I felt that way, sometimes. Like I was supposed to fix everything, but I didn't know what was broken, or what she wanted it to be like in the first place."

  "It's impossible to make someone like that happy. Either they adjust their expectations, or you continue to fail them, in their eyes. And when you love them, you end up failing in your own eyes, too."

  "I did love her," he whispered. "But God, why Jenny? Why did she have to take Jenny? Could she have hated me that much, and I didn't know?"

  "I didn't know Linda, so I can't guess. Maybe it was to hurt you, or maybe she was so confused by then, so caught up in her own despair that she thought she was saving Jenny from what had overtaken her."

  "They told me that. That she probably thought she was saving Jenny. I asked them from what, and they gave me some psychology doublespeak that translated to they had no idea."

  Casey studied him for a long moment. Then, thinking first that perhaps she was risking truly angering him, then realizing that if she was going to, better now than when she got any more involved with him, she said what she'd been wondering since he'd told her the gruesome tale.

  "So how long do you pay?"

  His head came around suddenly. His gaze was sharp, intent. It was also unsettling. "What do you mean by that?"

  She shrugged, trying to make it less of a loaded question. "I just wondered how long you'd sentenced yourself to. Life?"

  His jaw tightened, and she knew she'd struck home.

  "You're a tough judge, Clay Yeager. No court would sentence you to that. In fact, most people wouldn't sentence you at all. If we went to jail for the things we didn't do that we think we should have, we'd all have done time."

  "Most people don't have people die because of what they didn't do."

  His voice was as hard as it had ever been. And she couldn't argue with his bottom-line logic. So she tried another tack.

  "Were you a good cop?"

  His brows furrowed. "That doesn't—"

  "Were you?"

  He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "So they say."

  "Save any lives?"

  "You think that evens it out?" His gaze narrowed again.

  He was angry now, but Casey was glad to see it. Anything was better than that ghastly dead look.

  "No. It was just a simple question. Did you?"

  There was a pause, and she wondered if he was considering not answering at all. Then, finally, with a grimace, he said, "A few."

  "So do you figure you should be rewarded for that?"

  "No. I was just doing my job."

  "So if you shouldn't be rewarded for what you did, why should you be punished for what you didn't do?"

  He looked at her for a long moment. "That's some very convoluted logic, Ms. Scott."

  "It makes as much sense as what you're doing to yourself. Even if you'd pulled the trigger yourself, you'd likely get out on parole eventually."

  "That," he said sourly, "is the fault of our justice system."

  "So no parole for you, ever, is that it?"

  "My little girl is dead. That's about as permanent as it gets."

  "And you can't bring her back. You can wear this hair shirt for the rest of your natural life, and it won't change. She'll still be gone."

  "Do you think I don't know that?" A note of barely restrained desperation had crept into his voice.

  "I'm sure you do know it. So the question is … do you really think Jenny would want it this way? Would she want you to torture yourself forever over something you couldn't control?"

  "But I should have done something! Everybody always talked about how good I was at my job, at reading people, at talking to people, getting people to talk, negotiating hostage situations—but I couldn't see that my own wife was so far gone that she would kill herself." The desperation broke through then. "And that she'd take our baby with her."

  "God, Clay," Casey said, abandoning any effort to make him see reason, "I'm so sorry."

  Instinctively she reached for him, knowing she couldn't ease the pain but unable not to try. To her surprise, he let her hold him. She thought perhaps he was just too distraught to realize what she was doing, what he was allowing. But then he sagged against her, shuddering, and the why didn't seem to matter any longer. The only thing that mattered was that he wasn't fighting, when she sensed he'd been fighting every day of the last five years.

  "You said rape was the only crime where the victim was put on trial. But didn't you do that to yourself? Put yourself on trial and find yourself guilty? And you were as much a victim as I was, Clay. Somebody destroyed your l
ife, too."

  As she held him, as she felt the shudders of emotion rack him, heard the gulping gasps for breath, she wondered if he'd ever let himself cry for his loss, or if he'd simply plunged straight into the morass of guilt he was mired in now. And she wondered at the strength of her own desire to relieve him of that pain, to pull him out of that destructive mire and back into living.

  And she wondered why she hadn't realized the truth until now, the truth of why his bolting suddenly had hurt so badly. Before, the comings and goings of others in her life had meant little; she'd never let anyone get close enough to matter. No one had ever seemed worth the effort it took to get past the instinctive barriers she put up.

  But Clay seemed to have done it without trying at all. Because she cared. She cared a great deal. It had happened, and she hadn't even known it until he'd left and she'd felt the unexpected hurt.

  She waited for the fear to strike, the fear she'd come to expect at the very thought of getting close to a man. But it didn't come. It took her a moment to realize why, that her fears were nothing compared to the pain Clay endured every day.

  The wonder of it made her a little shaky. Clay had fallen into her life so suddenly, and she knew deep down he was apt to leave just as suddenly. And she knew as well that putting her heart on the line for a man so wounded could wind up leaving her badly hurt yet again.

  Yet she didn't seem to have a choice anymore. His pain had lowered her guard, and before she'd realized it, she'd let him in. And now she didn't know what to do about it. Didn't know what he would let her do. Didn't know what she wanted to do.

  So she did the only thing she could think of. She held on.

  * * *

  If he'd harbored any hopes that his story would scare her off, Clay soon realized he'd underestimated her.

  He'd also, he thought, underestimated his need for her. She probably saw him now as some kind of wounded animal in need of tending. But her tender touch weakened his resolve, made him want to cradle himself in her arms forever. And he didn't even have the strength to be scared at the thought. Even when he realized that he was, for the first time since the door had risen on that horrific scene, crying. It seemed almost natural to be doing it in Casey's arms. She understood, somehow, whether through her own terrible experience, her gentle nature or some combination of both. She understood loss, the kind of loss that was permanent and never fixable. She understood, and it felt so damn good to just let go…

  You were as much a victim as I was, Clay. Somebody destroyed your life, too.

  He'd never thought of it that way. He'd thought first and foremost of Jenny as a victim, and even Linda, but never himself. In his mind he'd always been the one who failed, the one who'd been blind to what was right before him and had let it all happen.

  Survivor's guilt, the shrink had said. It had become his identity, more than the uniform had been, more than the badge had been, more than all the commendations and medals had ever been. It had driven him for years, aimlessly, rootlessly, until he was sure of only one thing: he could never go back. Could never go back to what was left of his family, or to the friends who had once been like family to him.

  To all the people who had thought him a hero but who he'd let down.

  Casey tightened her arms around him, holding him as if she wished she could absorb the pain. It was an incredible feeling to Clay, especially knowing the extent of her own nightmarish memories. How could she still give like this, after what she'd been through?

  He felt her touch on his hair but didn't realize for a moment that she'd kissed him. He held his breath, waiting, and it came again, this time just above his ear.

  God, it felt so good, so warm, so utterly tempting. Did he dare? Could he, just this once, accept her tending, as if he were that wounded animal? He felt wounded, all right. Odd how he'd never felt the lack in his life, the aloneness, never felt much of anything before he'd stumbled onto Casey's farm and into her life. He'd been gliding along, content, if not happy, in his numbness.

  But Casey made it impossible to stay numb. Even when he'd tried to run, he hadn't been able to leave her behind. She'd been with him every mile of the way, every hour he'd spent locked in that little room at the sheriff's office. Not even the irony of being on the wrong side of that locked door had managed to put her out of his mind.

  He'd fought it with as much determination as he could muster. But some part of him must have known he was going to lose, the part that had made him run at the first sign things were spiraling out of control.

  He had that feeling now, much more intensely. But he wasn't going to run. He wasn't sure when he'd made that decision, wasn't even sure he had; he only knew that when he thought of pulling away from her, he felt a pain that made moving simply impossible.

  He also wasn't aware of when the moment had changed, only that it had, that soothing comfort had become something hotter, more urgent. Her gentle kisses moved from his hair to his temple, and the feel of her soft lips on his skin sent a burst of heat through him that was startling in its intensity.

  Lord, she'd barely touched him and he was on fire, he thought. If she kept going…

  She did. Slowly, tentatively, she traced his jaw with a line of tiny, nibbling kisses. He fought down the surging response that was making it hard to breathe. His head lolled back, and when Casey continued that hot, fiery trail of kisses down his neck, he wondered vaguely if he'd hoped she would.

  His thoughts were caroming around wildly; he hadn't felt anything like this in years, if he ever had at all. He'd forgotten the power of it, and most of all, he'd forgotten how to deal with it. At first he was afraid she was being motivated by sympathy as much as anything, after hearing his grim tale. But then he remembered her own ugly story and knew it would take much more than sympathy to make Casey risk what she appeared to be risking.

  And it was that realization that made him afraid to move, afraid to do anything. He could only begin to imagine what it must be like for her, to make this kind of sexual overture with the memory of what had happened to her lurking.

  And it struck him suddenly, as he was thinking that he should—that he had to—call a halt to this, what it might do to her if he did. When he'd run, she'd thought that it might have been in response to what she'd told him. He knew there were men like that, had dealt with them, men who could not deal with, who were repulsed by, the thought of a woman who'd been raped. That she'd even for a while thought he might be one of those had hurt. Had hurt when he'd thought nothing could hurt him again, when he'd figured he was beyond pain because he was beyond caring.

  If he'd been thinking clearly, that would have been a clue. But it had been so long—forever, it seemed—since he'd had to deal with such feelings.

  Just like it had been forever since he'd experienced anything like what Casey's soft, sweet kisses were doing to him now.

  "God, Casey," he breathed, "that feels so damn good."

  For an instant she stopped, and he wondered if he'd ruined it, if she would withdraw now, if perhaps she hadn't really been thinking about what she'd been doing until he'd spoken. And he knew that if she wanted to stop, he had to give her that chance, no matter how much his body cringed at the idea.

  But then she went on, gently brushing her lips over the hollow of his throat, then tasting his skin with the tip of her tongue. Fire blazed anew along nerves long dormant, and he nearly gasped at the shock of it.

  He wanted desperately to grab her, hold her, kiss her senseless, give her back some of what she was giving him. But at the same time he knew he had to hold back; he had to let her take the lead. If there was nothing else he'd learned in his years in uniform, it was the fragility of women who had been sexually assaulted when it came to venturing back into intimacy. And suddenly the fact that he wasn't sure he wanted to risk this himself didn't matter.

  Not, he thought wryly, that it made a bit of difference; he doubted he could have stopped even if he'd been able to convince himself he really should. Not when her mouth
was on him, not when he could feel her warmth, could sense her eagerness despite her hesitancy.

  She pressed her lips to the skin in the open collar of his shirt, and an involuntary shiver rippled through him. His hands shot up to her shoulders, and he hung on to her as he slid down to lie on the bench, pulling her with him.

  He had a split second to savor the soft weight of her before it registered that Casey had gone very still. He realized abruptly that he was dwelling on the shock of what he was feeling and not concentrating on keeping himself in check. He had to be able to stop if she changed her mind. He only hoped he could; five years was a long stretch of doing without.

  He had to, he told himself again. And he thought of the courage with which she'd faced an ordeal that had defeated many, the courage with which she'd gone on, rebuilding her life, the courage she was showing right now.

  He had to let her know that, this time, "no" would be enough.

  "You're in charge, Casey," he whispered. "We go as far as you want, no further."

  It took a tremendous effort, but he didn't move, despite the fierce ache the feel of her atop him roused. And he bit back the groan that rippled up from his chest when she rose up to look at him, the movement pressing her hips hard against his, capturing flesh already rigid with need between them in a sweet, soft vise.

  But when he saw the look in her eyes, when he saw the glow of thanks, of need and of joy, he knew he would stay in control of himself no matter what it cost him.

  "I know," she said softly. "Or I wouldn't be here."

  "Are you sure … this is what you want?"

  "What I'm sure of is that for the first time in so very long, I … want. Like I never thought I would again."

  Her quiet, heartfelt words sent a shudder through him. He wondered how long it had really been since he'd felt wanted, for it to hit him so hard. Long before Linda had reached the breaking point, there had been little joy between them. He'd written it off as resentment over the long hours and all-consuming nature of his work; many cops had to deal with spouses who couldn't really understand. He would deal with it, too, as soon as he had time, he'd thought.