Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(186)

Suddenly she was furious at him, at all of them for thinking they knew what was best for her. “You didn’t care enough to be honest with me—don’t you tell me what I need,” she snapped.

He looked like she’d slapped him. Strong fingers raked through his black hair, shoving that rebellious lock backward.

It sprang forward again, spilling over his forehead. Then his face closed up. “I don’t expect you to understand what—”

She leapt to her feet. “Oh, no—God forbid anyone should think that the poor little rich girl has any backbone. She’s such a hothouse flower that she can’t possibly take care of herself or know her own mind.” The torpor that had enveloped her vanished like mist in the sun. Now she felt everything—anger, resentment, the bitter knowledge that she’d drifted through her life and let everyone else call the shots.

She paced the kitchen, one hand tightly gripping the fabric over her middle. Humiliation burned all the way up to her throat. “You made a mockery of me, Devlin Marlowe. I want you to tell me what my fath—what Charles DeMille did to your father that was important enough to take my heart and rip it open.”

“Lacey, calm down. Your stomach is hurting, isn’t it? You need—”

“Don’t you tell me what I need. You don’t know what I need. I thought you would understand, but you couldn’t possibly understand me and do that to me—” Razor-sharp pain ripped through her, and she bent over.

Dev moved toward her.

Lacey held her palm out in warning. “You stay away.” Her voice turned almost feral, half-wild with pain. “You stand over there and you explain to me what he did. You admit to me that I was only a means to an end.”

Dev’s hands lifted from his sides. She couldn’t bear the look in his green eyes.

“Admit it, damn you!” She forced herself to straighten against the pain. Her voice dropped lower. “And then you explain to me why you made love to me like that. How you could lie to me with every caress.” Half-blind with tears, she backed away from him, then felt the wall at her back.

Dev looked suddenly older. The devilish rake was gone. In its place was a man full of shadows.

He exhaled in a gust, his shoulders sinking.

The look on his face made her wrap her arms tightly around her middle.

“I did set out to seduce you back then, Lacey. I wanted to ruin the one thing Charles DeMille held most special, his pampered princess. He’d made it clear that we were beneath him and his blue-blooded family. I wanted to make him pay for every bit of charity he’d forced down our throats, for every time he’d made me feel worthless.”

His eyes hurt her to look at them. Her stomach was on fire. She started to walk away, unable to hear any more, but he grabbed her arm and whirled her back.

“That’s how it started, Lacey—but that’s not how it ended. My brilliant strategy blew up in my face when you turned out to be something so special and rare that even a revenge-seeking, hormone-driven boy could recognize it.” He dropped his hand. “I’m not proud of what I intended, but you need to know that I was so sick in love with you that it nearly killed me when you threw my love on the ground that night and walked away.”

Harsh laughter scraped from his throat. “It was my just desserts, I guess. But I wanted you, God, how I wanted you. You were the finest, most precious thing I’d ever known. You have to believe that, if you believe nothing else.”

She was so tired, so ravaged by emotion. Lacey wanted to burrow somewhere into the darkness until the nerve endings weren’t so raw. Wanted to flee the live coals burning from the inside out.

She looked at this man before her and saw the teenager who had stolen her heart, then left without a word. The man who’d given her the most romantic night of her life, made love to her like something out of a dream—

Then dropped the bombshell that had exploded her life.

“How can I? After this, how?” She stared at him. “I loved you, Dev,” she whispered. “I would have done anything for you.”

Dev laughed, and the sound of it was like grating metal. “You didn’t give all this up seventeen years ago—” He swept an arm out to include her luxurious surroundings. “You didn’t defy them for me then.” On his face was the bitterness that must have been festering all this time.

The burning inside her belly spread to her heart. Her vision grayed.

“Don’t lie to me, Lacey.” His voice was low and fierce. “Don’t lie to yourself. I begged you to come with me. You chose them.”

Her father had been right. Dev had every reason to want revenge.