Her Forgotten Betrayal(54)

“God!” He scooped her up and sat on one of the higher steps, pulling her close. “Darlin’, are you hurt?”

He leaned her far enough away to see the goose egg already swelling above her eye.

She tensed against his hold. “Let me go.”

“Like hell.” He stood and guided her around the damage on their way back down the stairs.

“Cole, I mean it.”

“First you’re pissed because I wouldn’t help you when your vivid imagination dreamed me into the middle of your damn shooting. Which, by the way, I wasn’t.”

He kicked open the door to the room they’d shared and settled her on the edge of the bed that was still warm from their bodies. He knelt at her feet, snagging his T-shirt and stuffing her into it.

“Now,” he continued, “you’re cranky because I’m sticking to you like glue. Could you calm down long enough to figure out what you want, Shaw, before my head explodes?”

His pulse was racing. He was quite possibly going to destroy something with his bare hands if he didn’t get himself under control.

The bastard had booby-trapped that step Cole had just repaired. When he went back to inspect it, he knew he’d find evidence of tampering. Evidence so obvious it would be impossible to miss. Along with the implication that he was responsible for Shaw’s latest accident. Hell, all her accidents. Accidents that had begun nearly the precise moment he’d stepped out of his watcher role and installed himself in her life.

“What’s wrong?” She pressed her fingers over his scowl.

The question was so out of context with the angry accusations she’d been tossing around, he couldn’t help but smile. Her eyes were clearing. The dream was finally losing its hold. Thank God. She was coming back to him.

“We seem to be in a bit of a mess here, don’t we?” he said.

“We?” She looked skeptical.

“This is a we situation from here out, Shaw.”

“Why? I’m a maniac, letting my nightmare do this to me. And I can’t seem to stop it, no matter how hard I try.”

He sighed. How did he make either one of them understand what was happening? There was only one thing he knew for certain. “Because I’m going to make damn sure you’re safe. No matter what. No matter who wants you to doubt me until you’ve completely turned away from my protection.”

The air in the room grew heavy with her suspicions…and everything he wasn’t saying. But she wrapped herself tighter in his shirt instead of bolting for the door again. He pulled the blanket from the bed and sat beside her, curling the soft cotton and his arm around her. He rubbed a hand up and down her arm.

“That broken step wasn’t an accident, was it?” she asked. “Someone is really doing these things to me.”

Needing distance so he could think clearly, Cole stood and slipped into his jeans without bothering with underwear. Zipping them, he grabbed his Glock from the table where he’d left it the night before and slipped the shoulder holster onto his bare back. He leaned a hip against the low bureau across from the bed and rubbed a hand over the beard he hadn’t bothered shaving in days.

“That step was sound, Shaw. I repaired it before joining you in here earlier. Then I locked us in, so nothing else would happen to you unless it came through me first. And nothing did. Not until I let you get away from me again.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why would someone be doing this? Why not just shoot me dead the first time? Or get it over with once I was up here unprotected, before you showed up?”

“Whoever it is doesn’t want to get it over with. He’s toying with you, hurting you, but making sure he doesn’t do any real damage. Hell if I know why, but it’s like he’s getting some kind of sick satisfaction out of scaring you. Most likely he also wants to fracture your mind completely so you won’t remember anything at all. And he wants you to believe that I’m the one who’s after you, like in your latest nightmare. Otherwise, why would he have used the broken stair this time? He obviously knew I’d worked on it.”

She shrank into the bedding. She reached for one of the pillows they’d tossed away so they could sleep more comfortably. Her gaze wouldn’t meet his.

“Do you really think it’s me?” he asked. “That I’m trying to kill you?”

She shook her head.

That was something, anyway.

“But you don’t fully trust me.” And he was about to give her an even more powerful reason not to.

She shook her head again. “You’re not telling me everything. I know there’s more to what’s happening in this house, and I think you know what at least some of it is. In the nightmare, you were telling me to remember my shooter, while he was screaming for me to forget. It was like the two of you were after each other, and I was in the middle of a wrestling match or something. I swear, I think I’m losing my mind.”