Hurricane Colt. That was what she called him. Destroying everything in his wake.
She was right.
He didn’t know what to say. Everything was going to sound like excuses—which they were—but he tried anyway. “I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was on that airplane. The message I’d received was that you had been in a bad car accident, and I thought I’d lost you. When I arrived, the nurse at the desk told me you’d been pregnant and had lost the baby, and that the father was in there with you now. I looked in the room and saw Scott lying next to you in bed, holding you, and something inside me just snapped. I knew I’d lost you to him, and I was so jealous and angry I couldn’t see straight.”
He couldn’t see what was right before his eyes. That his wife loved him—had always loved him—and onlyhim. As little sense as that made to him even now. What the fuck had she seen in him?
“He was comforting me. Scott was my friend. I’d just been told I’d lost our baby, which I know you didn’t want, but I did. I was devastated. You weren’t there, and I didn’t know if you’d bother to show up.” Her gaze held his unrelentingly, not letting him off the hook. “You hadn’t been there for me in years.”
He didn’t know what to say. What could he say? It was the damned truth.
“I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I was just so fucking scared of losing you.”
Their eyes held for a moment longer, but then she released them—him. “Well, you did.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact and left no room for argument. Did he want to argue? Fucking hell, he did. “I’m so sorry, Kate. I’m so damned sorry. I’d give anything if I could go back and change what I did.”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “It wasn’t just your fault. I expected too much. I knew you didn’t want a wife—or a child. I just thought I could change your mind.” The wry smile she gave him tore through his black, shriveled, and scarred heart. It was the smile of someone who had gotten over a painful event and put it in the past. Her words confirmed that. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve been divorced for three years, and we have both moved on.” She looked up at him and said the words that cut him to the quick. “You need to let it go, Colt.”
He knew what she really meant.You need to let me go.
She was right, but only now as the magnitude of what he’d done—and what he’d lost—became clear, he wasn’t sure that he could.
Six
Scott had experienced a number of devastating shocks in his life. The first was when he’d learned the man he’d idolized wasn’t his biological father. The second was when he’d read about Natalie’s death in a car crash. The third was a week and a half ago when he’d learned that the woman he’d thought had been killed for warning him had also been betraying him. And the most recent was a few hours ago when he sat at the stoplight and happened to glance over at the woman coming out of the city’s municipal building. It had brought him up with all the subtlety of a two-by-four slammed against his forehead.
At first he thought the woman was Jennifer Wilson—the person he was on his way to see at the rented farm he’d spent the last couple of days tracking her to. He’d known he was on to something as soon as he learned that Jennifer had broken a lease for a new apartment in New York and never showed up for the job that went along with it.
Jennifer Wilson was running. And the three towns he’d tracked her credit card receipts to since only made him more certain of it.
But then he felt a buzz up his spine. The woman was wearing glasses, her hair was slightly darker, and she was a little curvier, but that buzz exploded with recognition.
Was it...?
Could it be...?
For one unthinking moment his chest filled with relief and joy, before he caught himself. When the car behind him honked, and she turned to look at him he knew the truth. It was her.
Natalya had fooled them all. She wasn’t dead. She was alive and posing as her friend.
He’d turned away quickly before she could recognize him and drove to her farm to wait for her. It had taken her so long to get here that he’d begun to wonder if she’d made him and ran, when the sheriff’s car turned down the driveway.
Now that she was standing right in front of him, it was hard to rank all those shocks, but after three hours of festering, he was putting this one right up there.
For the first time in his life, Scott didn’t trust himself. His grip tightened as rage boiled inside him. When he thought of the men—his friends—who’d lost their lives, he could kill her.
He was holding her so close, so tight, the temptation should be strong. But that wasn’t the temptation he was feeling. The familiar sensations of overwhelming heat and fierce, almost animalistic attraction had taken hold. He caught the scent of her shampoo and the urge to bury his nose in the silky strands and inhale was so strong he hated himself for it—which only intensified that feeling of uncontrollable anger.
His muscles tightened, and he drew her in infinitesimally closer. But only for an instant. Seething and with a harsh curse, he pushed her away and forced himself to take a step back.
She looked up at him pleadingly, her green eyes round and huge behind horn-rimmed glasses that were giving him all kinds of sexy librarian fantasies—
He stopped.You have to be fucking kidding me. Is anything about her real?“Your eyes are brown! Or is that another disguise?”
He didn’t bother hiding the disgust in his voice; he wanted her to know what he thought of her.
If she thought it was strange that after all that had happened, the first thing he’d asked her about was her eye color, she didn’t show it. “It isn’t a disguise. My eyes are brown. You have to understand it wasn’t my idea—none of it was my idea. I never wanted to deceive you. But thank God, my warning reached you in time.”
