Like he’d done before. She didn’t say the words, but they reverberated through him. He looked at her sitting inches from him, her hair loose around her face, the mutinous line of the mouth that could set his body to fire. She no longer wore that slinky robe, and for that, he found himself grateful. But somehow, even in the severe black pantsuit, she still managed to look shockingly vulnerable, wary, but beautiful all the same.
“Who said I was trying to break you?” Maybe he’d been trying to break himself.
A hard sound broke from her throat. He refused to label it pain.
“You forget,” she said. “I know you, Dylan. I know how you operate. But it’s not going to work. You can’t rattle a confession out of me—you lost that ability long ago.”
The words sounded tough, but he’d felt the tremor race through that lithe body of hers. Who was she trying to convince? he wondered. Him? Or herself.
“Careful, Bethany. Some men might mistake that as a challenge.”
She pulled his hand away from her face. “Let me go.”
He should, he knew. A smart man would unlock the door and let her vanish into the night all over again. But he couldn’t do that. Lance was dead, and Bethany had bruises around her wrists. He didn’t want to think about what other, less visible, wounds she hid. But did.
“You always thought you’d break if you showed emotion. But the truth is you’ll break if you don’t. There’s honesty in feeling things deeply. Not shame.”
Through the glow of the dashboard, her eyes darkened. At the house, he’d seen the wall of ice slide into place, but this time her expression remained naked and raw, like she was bleeding from the inside out and couldn’t make it stop.
“Maybe I don’t feel anything.” The words were soft, brittle, surprisingly candid. “Maybe everything inside me is cold. Frozen.”
And maybe he was a fool. He never should have come to the police station, never should have left his grandfather’s house. He’d gone there to tell the judge about Lance, but afterward, the silence had been suffocating. The older man had retreated, not showing a flicker of the grief Dylan knew he felt.
“It’s called shock,” he said and knew, “but someone who doesn’t know you could mistake lack of emotion for lack of feeling.”
“And you, Dylan? Is that what you think?”
“I know you’re capable of feeling. At least you used to be.” Earlier, the years between them had fallen away; now they stacked right back up. “But I don’t know you anymore, and I don’t have a damn clue how you felt about Lance.”
He never had, either. Part of him wanted to hear her express pure, undying love for his cousin. No matter how badly that would sting, at least it would help assure him Zito’s suspicions were as crazy as Dylan wanted them to be. Without that sentiment, he was left standing on the razor fine edge of doubt, and it was slicing him to the bone.
“Did you love him?” he asked point-blank.
She didn’t look away like he expected her to, like she once would have. Through the darkness, she just stared at him.
“Well?” he asked. “It’s not that tough of a question.”
Bethany looked down at the hands clasped severely in her lap, where the gaudy two-carat, emerald-cut solitaire Lance had given her no longer overwhelmed her slender finger.
“Lance and I had a…complicated relationship.”
“I thought it looked pretty simple.” Though he’d tried not to look at all. Not to know. “He went his way, and you went yours.”
She looked up abruptly. “Not every relationship has to be fire and brimstone. Sometimes they can be quiet and simple, undemanding. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“Relationship? It looked more like a photo-op to me.”
Pain flickered in her eyes, and yet she lifted her chin like a queen. “You have no right to pass judgment on me, Dylan. Not you, of all people. You and Lance were hardly the devoted cousins your grandfather wanted everyone to think you were.”
“How could we be?” Sebastian St. Croix had done his best to raise Dylan and Lance as brothers, but they’d been as different as fire and ice. Lance had thrived in the posh world of the Portland elite, old money and timeless hypocrisy.
Dylan had felt like he’d been sent to prison.
“The only thing we had in common was something two men should never share.” And now Lance was dead, leaving Dylan to pick up the pieces, like his cousin had done for him so long ago.
“I’m not doing this,” Bethany said, reaching for the door.
But he didn’t release the locks, wasn’t ready to let her go. “I’m just calling a spade a spade, sweetheart.”
She turned back toward him. “But that doesn’t change anything, does it? Lance is still dead. And no matter what went down between the two of you, the two of us for that matter, he didn’t deserve to die.”
She’d yet to say she loved him. He wondered if she realized that. Worse, he wondered why he cared.
“No,” he agreed, “he didn’t.” But too well, Dylan knew people didn’t always get what they deserved. Or wanted.
Once, a long time ago, Dylan’s grandmother had given him a bag of marbles. He’d loved playing with the small, colorful glass balls, had spent hours organizing and sorting them. Then Prince Lance had come over, yanked the bag from Dylan’s hands, and dumped them on the sloping driveway. The marbles had scattered everywhere, and no matter how quickly Dylan tried to scoop them up, they just kept rolling away from him. With sickening clarity, he remembered the sound of Lance’s laughter.
But when his grandfather had caught them fighting, it had been Dylan who got the belt.
Now he studied Bethany through the blue glow of the dashboard lights, the shadows playing against the soft lines of her face. Silky hair cascaded down her shoulders, looking more sable than brown. She’d brushed it, he noted, and wondered if Lance had ever done the task for her. Like he had.
A long time ago.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“Home,” she started, but he saw the second awareness dawned. Her home was a crime scene. “Maybe a hotel.”
“The media will be crawling all over you there,” he said. “You’ll be safer at my house.”
Her eyes flared. “Your house?”
He didn’t stop to think. “It’s isolated, secure. No one would find you there.”
And he really was out of his mind.
She just stared at him. And when she spoke, her voice was soft but cutting, classic Bethany. “That was me on the patio this evening. That was me you practically accused of killing your cousin. It’s too late to pretend you’re on my side.”
No matter where he stepped, they always landed in the same place. “I’m not the one pretending, Bethany.”
She didn’t defend herself as he wanted, didn’t take the bait. She just frowned. “It’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t have the energy for your games right now. Please. Let me go.”
“My God,” he said in a deceptively quiet voice, the one that masked all those sharp edges slicing him up inside. “You’re really just going to sit there and act like that night on the mountain didn’t happen?” He’d told himself he wasn’t going to bring it up, but the fact she was pretending it never happened pushed him over the