Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [44]
She closed the door again. She couldn’t go out there barefoot, no matter how desperate she was. There were shoes in this place, and she’d find them, or end up binding her feet in rags. Anything to get away.
She eyed the door to the garage doubtfully. She knew for a fact that Dillon had to be upstairs in bed at this early hour—she would have heard his footsteps in the hall if he’d left his room. The outside door had been locked—she wasn’t going to run into anything she didn’t want to. Anyone, she amended.
She half expected the garage door to be locked, but it opened easily beneath her hand. The cavernous room was cloaked in shadows, and there was no light switch by the door. None that she could see anywhere.
The Duesenberg sat in the middle of the huge room, its hood open, engine gleaming beneath. The concrete was cold and rough beneath her feet, but she moved deeper into the garage, drawn to the one place she shouldn’t have been. The bright yellow Cadillac convertible.
He’d pulled the cover off it completely, and it sat there in pristine glory. In fact, apart from the new leather seats, it looked the same. Dillon had always put huge pride into his car, and the car had showed it. Back then the rips in the leather seat had been covered with duct tape—at nineteen Dillon hadn’t been able to afford new leather. He could now.
She put her hands on the side of the car, forcing herself to look down. She couldn’t remember why she’d been fool enough to get into the back seat with Paul in the first place. There’d been the tequila, of course. And the fact that Paul was the most sought-after boy at the Marshfield School, and for some reason he wanted her.
But those weren’t the reasons. It was that Dillon Gaynor had finally kissed her, touched her, then abandoned her the moment another girl had come along. Passed her along to Paul like a prize in a turkey shoot.
She began to shiver, and when the door to the garage opened she didn’t turn.
“Why did you do it?” she asked in a quiet voice, so quiet that she doubted he could hear her.
But he could. “Do what?”
“Hand me over to Paul Jameson.”
He didn’t deny it, when she’d been hoping he would. “I thought he’d be love’s young dream. The perfect boy for an innocent like you. Quarterback on the football team, senior class president, voted most likely to succeed and all that crap. I thought he’d be the prince for an innocent princess like you. And Nate told me you always had a crush on him.”
That made her jerk her head around to stare at him. Mistake. He was shirtless, shoeless, his jeans zipped but unbuttoned. Even in the shadowy darkness she could remember why she’d always longed for him, daydreamed about him. His beauty was unmistakable.
“I don’t know why Nate would have said something like that. It wasn’t Paul I had the crush on, and I was pretty sure he knew it.”
“Who did you have a crush on?”
Dangerous territory, and she wasn’t going to go there. “Why would Nate—” she persisted, but Dillon interrupted her.
“Screw Nate. He’d lie any chance he had if he thought it would be to his advantage.”
“Why would me having rough sex be to his advantage?”
“It wasn’t just rough sex, Jamie. It was rape.”
She didn’t want to hear that word, the one she’d avoided for twelve years. “No, it wasn’t. I got in this car with him on my own accord. It was my fault.”
“Bullshit. You were drunk, and Paul thought he was God’s gift to womanhood. He wouldn’t have listened if you said no. And you did say no, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. He’d moved closer, and she hadn’t heard him advance. Too close, blocking the only doorway. She quickly looked back at the car. “I don’t see why you’d remember it all so clearly. You had to have been drunk as well.”
“I was. I could hold my liquor better than that little pissant.”
Oddly enough