Page 3 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

Yeah, that’s what she’d do.

Sniffing, she brushed the tears from her eyes with a gloved hand, then gripped the wheel so hard her fingers ached as she headed out of town and into the surrounding mountains. Then, as the snowfall increased, she flipped on her wipers.

Rebecca was expecting her.

Her sister. God. It was almost impossible to accept that James had been interested in Rebecca first. And, damn it, Rebecca, the ice queen, had fallen for him too! Well, nearly. As much as Rebecca would allow herself to fall for a man like James—a sexy bad boy with a reputation . . .

That was the trouble with James! He was handsome as hell and enough of a cad—yes, a cad!—that women found him attractive without even realizing he was rich. Or . . . would be, once he inherited the rest of his share of the Cahill fortune. Even without that knowledge, women were continually flinging themselves at him, and he, prick that he was, didn’t exactly discourage them.

Fortunately, in Rebecca’s case, she’d put all that behind her.

Her sister was long over James.

Right?

Didn’t matter, Megan told herself, chin jutting as she squinted through the windshield, snowflakes swirling and dancing in the glow of her headlights.

Rebecca would know what to do.

She always did. Rock-steady, determined Rebecca Travers would help Megan set things right. Despite any latent feelings Rebecca might harbor toward James.

Megan’s conscience twinged a bit. How many times had she relied on her sister? How often had she run crying back to her older sibling, who always helped? Even when . . . ?

She felt a small stab of guilt, which probably should have been sharper. Deeper. She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror.

The blue eyes in the reflection were red-rimmed, but not because of remorse. If she had the chance to do it all over again, to right that wrong . . . she bit her lip and pushed the thought out of her mind as her car struggled against the incline. She wasn’t a bad person. Not really. And James . . . Oh, dear God, James . . .

A lump filled her throat as the Corolla nosed upward, snow now covering the pavement and piling along the sides of the road where the plow had come through earlier. She fiddled with the defrost knob, as the windshield was beginning to fog, and cranked the temperature to the highest level.

Nothing.

The fan was broken. Had been for weeks.

“Shit.” She grabbed a used napkin from the coffee shop, which had been wedged into a cup holder. Lump in her throat, she swiped away the film as best she could, then she squinted through the windshield.

What little traffic there had been had thinned, and finally, as the car climbed, engine whining, she found herself alone on this stretch of road winding through the night-dark peaks of the Cascades. She pressed harder on the gas. “Come on. Come on.” Visibility was hampered by the ever-increasing snowfall and, of course, the useless defroster. Once more, she wiped a spot clear above her steering wheel to see that now, in the mountains, the snowstorm was nearly a whiteout.

“Great.”

She thought of James, and her heart crumbled. A wash of memories slipped through her mind, and tears threatened again. She hit the gas at the next sharp turn.

He

r wheels shifted.

Spun.

She eased off. “Get a grip,” she told herself as the car straightened out, the beams of her headlights reflecting in a million swirling flakes, the engine lugging down with the steep incline.

Their last fight had been their worst. Never before had anger and nasty words turned physical, but tonight her rage had been mercurial.

More tears.

Blinding her, just as rage had blinded her earlier.

Shaking her head against the memory, she floored the accelerator, snagged the wet, wadded napkin, and took another swipe at the fogged windshield as the road dipped suddenly.

“Crap!”

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