She was nothing. No one. And she was all alone. If she couldn’t trust her parents, who could she trust?
She risked one look at Dev. His dark, ravaged face softened with something that looked far too much like—
Pity. He pitied her.
“Lacey—” She’d never heard her mother sound lost or helpless. “Lacey, don’t leave…”
She turned back, looking at two people she realized she had never really known.
“But he’s not lying about my birth, is he? Why, Daddy? Was I so unacceptable as I was? Were you ashamed? How could you? My whole life, all of it, is a lie. You—” Before she broke down, she had to get out of here. Had to go somewhere she could think, could figure out what to do next. All she could think to do was move blindly toward the door.
Dev followed her. “Lacey, let me take you home. You’re upset. I understand.”
She slapped his hand away. Snarled. “Go to the devil, all of you. You don’t understand. None of you do. My whole life I’ve never been able to look in a mirror and see that I looked like someone I knew. I never understood why—but now I do, don’t I?”
Her heart cracking inside her chest, Lacey looked at them, thinking with a crazy kind of clarity that she finally understood why being a DeMille was such a struggle for her.
“I’m not really one of you,” she marveled. A hollow little laugh escaped her throat. “No wonder I can’t be perfect like you, Mother.”
“Lacey, we’re your parents. We’re your family. Don’t listen to him. We’ll talk,” her mother soothed. “You’ll understand—”
Her father broke in. “You can’t possibly take the word of this good-for-nothing—”
“Leave her alone,” Dev roared. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to her? Stop making her choose.”
“Stop it—all of you, stop it!” Lacey’s stomach was on fire. “Leave me alone. Just—leave me alone.” She flung open the door and raced through it. Ran to her car as though demons chased her.
Demons did.
As her tires screamed down around the curve and onto the street, Lacey wondered. Who am I?
But there was no one to give her the answer, except the couple who had betrayed her…and the man who had ruined her life for revenge.
And at the scene of her devastation, Dev cast one heated glance backward.
Margaret DeMille had abandoned her proud posture. Bent like an old woman, she sobbed softly. Dev could almost feel sorry for her—almost. Then he thought about the last look on Lacey’s face.
He turned to the man who had wreaked such havoc. “I hope you’re happy,” he growled.
“You stay away from her. This is all your fault.”
Dev’s jaw clenched. “You go ahead and try to believe that. She’s turned herself inside out to please you, and it was never enough. You’ve robbed both of us of years of happiness.” Dev headed for the door, desperate to follow her.
At the door he turned back, pinning his oldest enemy with a glare that could melt lead. “If you ever hurt her again—ever lie to her again to save your own hide—I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you never see her again. She’s got a good family waiting for her. They’ll accept her and love her, just as she is.”
“She won’t want to see you, either, Marlowe.” DeMille wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“Maybe not.” Dev drew in a deep breath and tried not to think about the pain of losing her once more. “But she’ll have to tell me that herself. I’m not abandoning her, ever again. I should have fought you harder last time, but I was just a kid and you held all the cards.”
His fists clenched. “You have no power over me now, DeMille, and I’m not leaving. I’ll protect her from a distance, if that’s how it has to be—but I am never, ever walking away from her again.”
Not until Lacey herself tells me she doesn’t want me.
And even then, not without a fight. He’d missed too many years with the other half of his heart.
Chapter Eleven
Lacey didn’t go home. There she would have to see the bed where Dev had made love to her with such power, with a tenderness that even now ripped all the way to her heart. She would have to see him in every corner, smell his scent on her pillow, remember his touch, his taste—
A car stopped suddenly in front of her, and she jerked herself to attention. Her whole body was shaking, and she needed to get off the road before she fell apart. But where to go?
She was so alone. So adrift.
She didn’t know anything anymore. Who to trust, what to believe. Her life was quicksand, and no one was around to save her.