“So, my dear daughter, you’re going to have to earn your keep.”
So, what else is new? The words almost escaped. She’d been doing the majority of the housework for years.
He came closer, slowly, gaining on her inch by inch, his height throwing a shadow on her in the doorway. Jamie didn’t want to shrink from him. She forbade herself to give him that satisfaction. Not anymore. Her mother had gone to her grave a beaten woman. Jamie wasn’t going to do the same.
“I’m curious.” He stopped, pinning her with his cold stare. “How does it feel knowing all of those people were crying today because of you?”
“What?” She shifted away from the door frame.
“You killed her,” John said.
His expression had softened and he smiled sadly as he gazed at her. Jamie’s heart began to thud so heavily in her chest it constricted her breathing. But she still didn’t shrink from him.
“I didn’t,” she whispered. She wasn’t going to let him convince her of something so horrible. She refused to accept any guilt. She’d risked her life for her mother—many times. Sadie Archer had been the one person in the world who loved her. Jamie would have killed herself before she ever did anything to hurt her mother.
“Of course you did,” John whispered hoarsely. He’d stopped a couple of feet in front of her and stood with his hands in his pockets. “Won’t do you any good to pretend, Jamie. You killed her as surely as if you’d put a gun to her head.”
“No!” Jamie felt the tears start to flow, deep inside, where no one could see them.
“That night you called to ask permission to stay later at the library.”
“You said I could.” Jamie hadn’t wanted to leave her mother alone with John, but he’d been in one of his nicer phases. And she’d needed to get a few more references for an English paper she was writing.
“Yes, well, unbeknownst to me, your mother had already left to get you.”
He was a raving lunatic, his story so obviously unfounded. “She knew where I sat in the library. If she’d come, she would’ve found me.”
“Her car broke down on the way.”
Thinking back to that night a couple of weeks ago, Jamie remembered her mother and John picking her up when the library closed. They’d been in John’s car.
She wasn’t sure where this was leading, but she was suddenly scared. Too scared to run. Too scared to move when John took a step closer.
“It was raining that night,” he said.
His voice was still soft, but Jamie trembled anew when she heard the lilt of victory in his tone. He advanced another step.
She was confused now, doubting herself. And if she’d had anything to do with the illness that had finally taken her mother’s life, she didn’t care if John hit her. She didn’t care if he killed her.
“Your mother was exposed to that rain when she had to walk the half mile to a phone, then wait there for me to come bail her out of her troubles again,” John said. His hands were still in his pockets, but the muscles in his forearms were bunched.
His dark hair left menacing shadows on his forehead.
“The next day, as you know, she came down with a cold that led quickly to the pneumonia that killed her.”
Jamie stared at him. Horror made her sick, weak. Surely she couldn’t be blamed for the rain! Or the run-down state of her mother’s car.
“If you hadn’t been at the library, forcing Sadie out in the first place, she’d never have been exposed to that rain at all.”
“But...”
“Or if you’d found another way home, a friend maybe, like most teenagers do, rather than relying on your mother all the time, she wouldn’t have been out in that rain.”
“But...” Desperate to end this nightmare, to be certain she wasn’t to blame for her beloved mother’s death, Jamie meant to tell John that if he’d only kept her mother’s car in better shape, Sadie wouldn’t have had to worry about the rain. But she never got the chance.
“Or—” he took another step “—if you’d called sooner, before seven, when she left to pick you up, none of this would have happened.”
He was right. Dammit, he was right. She’d been so caught up in her reading that she hadn’t noticed the time. Her mother always got her from the library at 7:30; it was a standing arrangement. Jamie should have called earlier, saved her the trip.
John took another small step, pulling one hand slowly out of his pocket.
Jamie shrank back.
SHIVERING, Jamie clutched her stomach with both arms, her gaze darting frantically around her cheery kitchen, trying to connect with the present, to bring herself back. To hold on. But the memories just kept right on coming, right on hurting....
“YOU’RE LUCKY I’m willing to keep you, considering what you’ve done.”
John’s soft voice penetrated Jamie’s numb mind. So filled with guilt was she that for a second or two she almost believed him.
She saw his hand coming toward her, braced herself for a blow to the side of her head.
And felt a gentle caress, instead. His hand stroked from the top of her bent head, moving slowly down to her chin, lifting her face to look at him. And suddenly Jamie knew fear like she’d never known before.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her cheeks when she encountered the hot fire of lust in her stepfather’s eyes.
“You took my companion from me,” John whispered. “A man has needs, natural, powerful needs.”
Unable to make a sound, shaking convulsively, Jamie just stared at him in horror. God. No. Not this. Let him beat me to death. Let him stick a gun to my head. But not this.
“Wouldn’t look right for me to search out another woman to take to my bed, not so soon after your mother.” His caress continued slowly downward, along the length of her neck.
She stood frozen beneath his touch, completely unprepared.
“So you see how lucky it is that I don’t have to search. You took her from me.” His hand reached her collarbone, his fingers sliding inside the neckline of her sweatshirt.
Jamie flinched. And just that quickly, the caress became brutal, a vicelike grip bruising her collarbone as John pulled her closer.
“The very least you can do after depriving me of my wife is to take her place yourself.”
“No!” Her scream tore past the constriction in her throat. She was burning up. Sick. And freezing, too.
“Yes.” John bit the word out through clenched teeth as he planted his other hand firmly on her breast.
A part of Jamie just evaporated as her stepfather’s big hand kneaded her soft flesh roughly, touching her where she’d never been touched before. Where he should never have been touching.
His eyes gleamed, almost glassy with lust. Still holding her in a bruising grip, he moved his hand to her other breast. “Oh, yes, I’m going to like this,” he murmured.
And almost before she knew it was happening, he’d pushed up the hem of her sweatshirt, ripping her bra in his hurry to get to her naked flesh.
“Nooooo!” Jamie screamed. She yanked away from him, not caring if he broke her neck with