Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(184)

He’d known. Known it would hurt her. During that magical date, he’d looked at her over and over, yet all she’d seen was longing.

Because that’s what she’d wanted to see?

Backing away from her bedroom as though it were a den of snakes, Lacey all but crawled to the sofa and huddled against a chill that couldn’t be explained by the sixty-odd degrees outside.

Who was she, if she wasn’t a true DeMille?

It would explain everything, if it were true. Why she’d never felt like she truly fit. Why her mother pressed so hard for her to be perfect.

Because she was a mongrel of some sort.

Two poor country kids from Morning Star. Was that what he’d said?

Where was Morning Star?

And who did she come from? Why had she been so easy to give up?

Lacey thought she remembered Dev explaining, but her mind had been careening like a drunk. She’d missed most of what he said as the litany fired through her brain. It’s not true. It can’t be true. I know who I am—why are you lying?

She has your eyes.

A sister. She had a sister? For years and years, she’d prayed for one. Had imagined one at her tea parties. While playing dress-up. At night when she went to bed alone.

And had Dev mentioned brothers?

It hurt too much. She couldn’t bear it.

But she wanted to know their names.

No. She didn’t. Not if she had to ask Dev.

Why had he showered her with sweetness, set fire to her blood…shown her rapture? Why had Dev lied to her with every breath?

Revenge was a potent motive. One of the best.

Lacey’s stomach burned, but she couldn’t bear entering that bedroom again to get at a new roll of antacids. Carefully, she forced her mind to empty, her breathing to slow.

Concentrate on the painting over the fireplace. Not on people. Not on what’s happened.

With careful, steady discipline, Lacey aped the woman who wasn’t really her mother…and summoned her formidable will to the aid of her rebellious stomach.

Finally, wrung out and exhausted, she dozed.

When she awoke, she was logy, muzzy with sleep. The fire in her belly had died to embers, and in its place was a longing that mocked her. She realized that, despite everything, the only person she wanted to see, the only one she thought would understand, was Dev. He hadn’t liked her money, had encouraged her at every step to break away from the life that had stifled her.

But all along, she’d been only a means to an end. A way to get back at her father for another grievous wrong.

She didn’t doubt now that her father—that Charles had done something terrible to Dev’s father. Whatever it was, she was sorry for all he and his family had suffered.

But she was even more sorry that Devlin Marlowe had ever stepped back into her life—and wrecked it.

You said you didn’t fit. You said you wanted something more. Here’s your chance, she told herself.

Lacey tried to summon the energy to feel liberated, to rejoice that she was free to choose. She should thank them all, she realized. They’d freed her. Old loyalties, old responsibilities…old dreams—all were useless. All were the past, fractured from the present like a fault line divides the land.

But all she felt was tired to the bone.

Her future lay ahead, an empty road.

But it was shrouded in mist, and Lacey had no map.



She was there at last, thank God, but she wasn’t answering her phone.

Dev was going to knock. If she didn’t answer the door, he was picking her locks. It might be illegal, but he didn’t care. He had to know that she was all right.

That she wasn’t planning something drastic.

Dev damned his palms for sweating. She’d better be angry. She’d better be spitting fire.

He didn’t think he could bear to see her so fragile again. So much like a baby’s breath could knock her down.

She might not want to see him, but he had to know that she wasn’t in trouble. He didn’t mind looking like ten kinds of fool if only he could find her inside painting her toenails.

He’d bet the farm that she wasn’t.

Lacey heard the pounding but ignored it. She had learned to ignore the ringing of the phone. She’d had to seek the antacids after all, then she’d donned her oldest, most comforting nightgown. All she wanted now was to sleep, but sleep seemed a million miles away.

The pounding stopped, mercifully. Lacey rolled over and tried to find a comfortable spot on a bed that still smelled of Dev and long, slow loving. The scent of him, the memories…

They broke her heart.

Then she heard the door open, and that same heart began to race.

Footsteps echoed down the polished wooden hallway floor. Her bedroom door burst open, and there he stood.

“A new look for you, Princess.” Dev forced calm into his voice and leaned against the doorjamb lazily, trying to still his rapid pulse. When she hadn’t answered, he’d been unable to erase the thought that he might find her lifeless, that he’d be responsible for sending her over the edge.