Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [37]
“Don’t start with me, Jamie. I’m extremely cross with you. With the both of you.” She turned her icy glare to Nate.
“But you’ll forgive me, Aunt Isobel,” he said sweetly. “You always do.”
Her mother gave him a rueful smile. “Out of here, the both of you. The less time you spend in the company of trash like Dillon Gaynor, the better off you are. I warned you, Nate.”
“Yes’m. You did.”
Nate put his arm around Jamie and led her out into the warm spring night. “You know, you gotta admire Dillon. There he is, in the midst of a drama, and he forgets all about it and gets in a fistfight with one of his buddies. The man doesn’t think of anyone but himself. It must have been Jimmy Canton—they’ve been gunning for each other for weeks, ever since Dillon ran off with Jimmy’s girl. I wonder if he killed Jimmy.” He sounded no more than vaguely curious.
Jamie shivered.
“Cheer up, Jamie,” Nate continued. “Don’t look so stricken. When we get home you’ll take a shower and forget anything ever happened.”
She glanced up at him in surprise, wondering if he was serious. He was. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo. The only other person who knows about this is Dillon, and he’s too drunk to remember anything by tomorrow morning. Besides, he’ll have more important things on his mind, like how he’s going to get out of spending a couple of years in jail.”
“What about Paul?”
“Oh, he’s not about to go bragging about this to anyone. Charlene would kill him. And if he does, just say he’s lying. People would believe you. After all, why would a good girl like you give it up in the back of someone’s convertible?”
She felt her stomach lurch at the memory. “Good point,” she said in a rusty voice.
“A shower and a good night’s sleep will make everything better,” Nate said cheerfully. “Trust me.”
“I always do.”
9
It would have been nice if she’d been able to sleep. She’d spent half the day zonked out, and now, when she really needed the oblivion of a good night’s sleep, it was eluding her, leaving her with nothing to do but replay that night, over and over again in her mind.
She really thought she’d put it all behind her. After all, her mother had paid handsomely for the therapy Jamie had requested without even asking why, and she’d worked hard at getting past the memory of that night.
And it wasn’t that bad, really. It wasn’t rape—he hadn’t hit her, hadn’t really hurt her. And she’d never had to see him again—when she’d surfaced from her bedroom two weeks later she heard that Paul had been in an accident and spent most of the summer in the hospital. He’d gone away to school for his senior year, and in a town the size of Marshfield, she’d never had to run into him again. She could pretend it had never happened.
If Nate hadn’t kept bringing it up.
She knew why he was doing it. He must have been trying to help her face it, deal with it, get past it. He didn’t understand that all she wanted to do was bury it. With Paul gone and Dillon in jail, there was nothing to remind her that that night had ever happened.
Except for Nate. And her sudden distaste for being touched by anyone. Which wasn’t a problem in the Kincaid family—neither Victor nor Isobel were demonstrative parents, and if she was lucky she could go for weeks without anyone putting a hand on her.
At least the subject of Dillon Gaynor had been completely off limits. She knew only the vaguest details—that he was in jail, that he was being sent away for nearly beating someone to death in a fight, but for once Nate wasn’t talking. Jamie had assumed that, for the first time, Killer had gone too far for Nate. Bad-boy misbehavior was one thing, felonious assault was a different matter.
And in the end it all could have been fine. But it wasn’t. Nate was now dead, beaten to death in the home of a man who’d already been convicted of almost doing the same thing to someone else. And Jamie was still terrified to have a man touch her.
The only one who seemed to be doing all right was Dillon. But then, he wasn’t troubled by scruples or second